Own the Future: 50 Ways to Win from The Boston Consulting Group

Chapter 27

The IT Organization of the Future

Jeanne W. Ross, Stephanie L. Woerner, Stuart Scantlebury, and Cynthia M. Beath

BCG is a patron of the MIT Center for Information Systems Research, which published the results of this research in a CISR Research Briefing by the same title in 2010.

As companies build digitized process platforms to replace large portfolios of isolated, and often redundant, systems and processes, they are fundamentally transforming the business.¹ But business transformation demands leadership. Where does that leadership come from?

This question featured prominently in a survey of chief information officers (CIOs) conducted by the MIT Sloan School of Management's Center for Information Systems Research (MIT CISR) and BCG. One of the survey's key findings was that CIOs believe that business leaders are not positioned to lead IT-enabled business transformations.

If business leaders are not able to drive the digitization of business processes, the need for IT to do so becomes acute. And the rewards for IT organizations that fill this role, as well as the benefits to their companies, are sizable. Indeed, CIOs of companies that are building and leveraging digitized process platforms are much more likely to describe the IT unit's role as “business change driver” rather than “order taker.”² What characterizes these IT organizations—the ones that are not just supporting ...