This is a great question. What does CIO stand for?

Imagine a business world where the CIO stood for Chief Innovation Officer. That is the digital world.

Why does the Innovation Chasm exist? CIO’s, have been charged with protecting the organization’s valuable assets, and with providing a reliable and stable infrastructure. As a result, some have become the “CI-No”:

• “No, we can’t buy that application you saw in an airplane magazine.”
•  “No, we can’t have a new Web site built in two weeks.”
•  “No, we can’t do that because it will expose our customer data.”

You can say no when IT is the only game in town: if the business wanted access to technology, they had to come through IT. That’s not the case anymore. One of the byproducts of the perfect storm is that the business can now access technology directly from the Cloud without IT’s involvement, and without IT’s knowledge. It happens in companies of all sizes, in every industry, regardless of your IT or security stance. When business has access to that technology, it widens the chasm.

IT has to up its game, and smart CIOs are on a path to help the business use technology to innovate both what they do and how they do it.

Here is a great visual of how to align with the CEO.
via Crossing the Innovation Chasm.