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Speaker: Your own CIO has a business background, not a technology background, correct? Is that an important trend? Is that the way you get to productivity and growth? Is that what must happen in the majority of corporations because that would be quite challenging to a lot of guys in this audience.
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Speaker: So let me tell you first an answer you're going to be uncomfortable with, then let me expand on it. The answer is yes. I think the majority of the CEIOs of the future will understand their business as their primary role, and how they use technology to enable it as the secondary role. However, both work. You can be a CIO who comes up through the technology side, and what you have to do is learn the business, but also put people reporting to you who really understand the business. Or you can be a business leader who doesn't understand the technology as well, but will learn it, and you put technology people as your key elements. Rebecca Jacovi come out of the business side of the house, and it took me nine months to convince her to do the job and more than a Rolex watch to convince her to do it because she knew what she was getting into.
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Speaker: So did she get one as well?
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Speaker: And now -- she got more than one. It cost me a lot. And now she's able to talk business and technology. But the first six months, it was not good. She talked to me about new data centers and Oracle releases, and I was saying productivity and acquisitions and new markets. And only after we came to be able to speak the same language, and talk what I wanted to be done and how IT enabled it, did I give her an unlimited budget. However -- one more thing if I can, Ken. The thing that is about to change with organization structures, think of how GE used to develop CEOs. We're now developing business leaders whether they're in IT, sales, engineering, government affairs, business development, manufacturing operations, that they serve on these social networking groups, and I will move them around by function. So actually, I could take probably business leaders and move them into IT. IT leaders, move them to other groups. I think this is more the wave of the future, perhaps a conversation for next --
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==== Transcribed by Automatic Sync Technologies ====
