The U.S. Technology Skills Gap: What Every Technology Executive Must Know to Save America's Future, + Website

CIOs SPEAK

Most books have forewords authored by one individual who often explains his, or her, passion for the topic covered by the book. For this book I decided to go a different route and invited 16 chief information officers to share their opinions about the importance of the skills gap challenge facing our nation. Their statements follow.

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“Unless we build a stronger curriculum in science, technology, and math and raise our expectations for K–12 education, we will foster a generation of tech-savvy users with few skills to build or innovate technology. The results will be detrimental to our country and our potential ability to compete in the global digital economy.”

Adriana Karaboutis, Vice President and Global CIO, Dell Inc.

“Success in IT requires a mastery of the fundamentals underpinned by strong ‘C’ skills: critical thinking, collaboration, and communication. Our best people apply critical thinking to determine how emerging technologies can be harnessed to deliver value for clients, ever mindful of changing marketplace and business requirements.”

Frank B. Modruson, CIO, Accenture

“America has a rich tradition of making things. The increasing technical sophistication of the world, combined with historically low numbers of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) graduates, at best fails to honor that history. And at worst it threatens to severely limit America’s future.”

Ralph Loura, CIO, Clorox Company

“In the past few years I have hired many deeply technical ...