The CIO role has come under considerable scrutiny because enterprise technology is now more strategic than ever before.
The shift toward strategic IT has happened with the growth of business models that rely on technology platforms. In summary, digital transformation has accelerated change in the CIO role from infrastructure provider to innovator.
When considering the topic of influential CIOs, the question of selection criteria immediately come up. How do you choose?
Is the CIO who works for the largest company most influential? How about the person with most followers on Twitter? Maybe he or she with the largest budget is most influential?
Also read: 20 Influential Chief Digital Officers
Wanting to recognize innovative CIOs without a year-long project, we turned to social network analysis and the Little Bird platform. The platform looks at peer groups, CIOs for example, who are present on social media. It then determines (and ranks) members that peer group based on the degree to which they influence other members of the group.
To create the CXOTALK list of 20 influential CIOs, we did the following:
- Used Little Bird to identify CIO influencers
- Removed anyone who is not an active CIO today
- Chose the top 20 remaining members of the group
Although not perfect, this methodology created a list that makes sense. We enlisted two great CIO influencers, Dion Hinchcliffe and Maryfran Johnson , to review the results. We are grateful to both these individuals; Maryfran even wrote the introduction.
Here is the CXOTALK list of 20 influential CIOs:
- Will Weider, Ministry Health Care
- Victor Fetter, LPL Financial
- Jonathan Reichental, City of Palo Alto
- Ryan Fay, ACI Specialty Benefits
- Scott Fenton, Wind River Systems
- Nigel Fortlage, GHY International
- Tom LaPlante, Arena Online
- Bruce Maas, University of Wisconsin-Madison
- Joanna Young, Michigan State University
- Vi Bergquist, St. Cloud Technical and Community College
- David Bray, Federal Communications Commission
- Stephen diFilipo, Milwaukee School of Engineering
- Rob Schmidt, California Department of Technology
- Stephen Landry, Seton Hall University
- Isaac Sacolick, Greenwich Associates
- Oliver Bussmann, UBS AG
- Kim Stevenson, Intel
- Jay Ferro, American Cancer Society
- John L. Shea, Eaton Vance
- Arun Manansingh, World Trade Centers Association