Transforming Business: Big Data, Mobility, and Globalization

The Storytellers

According to Gartner, by 2017, CMOs will spend more on IT than CIOs.¹

Imagine 300 people donned in their finest gala attire gathered at the most celebrated awards ceremony in their professional field. The big night starts with a bit of a hiccup. Several ticket holders are left holding the bag and out in the cold as their prepaid $125 tickets go missing at the admission office. Inside, things are a bit stranger. The program begins hours behind schedule because the emcee is also missing in action. Adding to the weirdness of the situation, the caterer steps on the stage and attempts to assuage an increasingly hostile crowd by commencing with the evening's ceremony. But, there's no script. Winners are forced to identify their prized work—projected in an out-of-focus slide show—to claim their coveted statuette as an everlasting symbol of a momentous and proud occasion. Just when things can't get any worse, they do. There is no winners' list for a key category, provoking the most exasperated in the audience to bum-rush the stage and claim any idle trophy as their own. The night ends in a cacophony of boos, hisses, and slurs as the curtain falls on the most prestigious event of the year.²

This incredible circus actually happened. But, because the statuettes in such high ...