The title means CIO doesnt mean Career is Over.

Increasingly there is a trend of rising prominence of "new school" CIOs – individuals that possess an optimal blend of technical skills and business savvy.

This breed treats the top IT position not as the end point of a career but as a stepping stone to the CEO or president post.

The old joke "CIO stands for ''career is over'" no longer rings true. Examples of CIOs being promoted to the role of CEO or to other executive-level positions now abound – there is even a Web site listing these movers and shakers.

Two primary reasons are fueling this trend:

• The increasing prevalence of IT and the consequent need to have some understanding of how to use this crucial resource by those who serve on the executive teams and the boards of directors

• The fact that the prevalence of IT and IS throughout the organization gives CIOs a broad view of operations, business processes, interorganizational coordination challenges and opportunities, and a broad understanding of how the firm is positioned to execute its strategy

Source: 1

Prashanth Rai

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One Response to “CIO != Career is Over, CIO -> CEO”

1. Meridith Levinson says:

   July 18, 2007 at 5:35 am

   We’ve long tracked the career progression of CIOs at CIO magazine and CIO.com. The CIO Executive Council (CEC) is spearheading a program called The Future State CIO http://advice.cio.com/rick_pastore/are_you_misusing_the_cio_title_a_message_to_the_cio_community_from_the_cio_executive_council_0 that seeks to define the role at its most strategic potential and provide tools to IT managers to help them become more strategic and business savvy. The CEC partnered with executive search firm Egon Zehnder to compare the skills and competencies of the best CIOs to the best CEOs so that IT executives can benchmark themselves. It’s a cool program and worth checking out.

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