Leading the Epic Revolution: How CIOs Drive Innovation and Create Value Across the Enterprise

Chapter 4

Accelerating Innovation

Thaddeus Arroyo, the CIO at AT&T, is a true visionary and IT leader. Thaddeus graciously shared his perspectives with the HMG Strategy team in a wide-ranging conversation about technology, innovation and business transformation. Thaddeus makes a strong case for IT leadership in a rapidly changing world. Here are edited highlights of his deep understanding and insight, gleaned from our conversation:

Information technology executives and professionals don't have to be told about the relationship between innovation and technology. They already know you can't have one without the other. They also know innovation is essential to business growth, and that it's been that way for a long time.

Today we're seeing a dramatic increase in the speed at which innovation occurs. Rapid shifts in technology are changing the way business does business. In this still-emerging and increasingly interconnected landscape, converging technologies are creating new opportunities at a pace that would have been inconceivable in the past.

What are the enablers of this new era of rapid transformation? Here are some examples: Advances in powerful mobile computing devices; connections to fast and ubiquitous networks; and services in a robust cloud infrastructure.

Those enablers currently allow companies to accomplish things that would have been hard to imagine a few years ago. The impact of those enablers will be felt for years to come.

When we talk about the “connected landscape,” ...