Today's CIO faces enormous challenges, including new technologies, global competition, regulatory requirements, and IT workforce diversity. These seas of change push CIOs and their organizations into a constant state of evolution. What does the evolution entail? Join Jeffrey A. Balagna, EVP, Chief Information & Customer Technology Officer of Carlson Companies, Inc., for a lively and informative discussion that will challenge the way you think about CIOs and IT organizations. Balagna will offer real life examples of the successes and hurdles he experienced at Carlson, Medtronic, GE and Ford developing, implementing, and collaborating on an "Action Agenda."

To achieve its strategic aspirations, Cargill is undertaking a significant, multi-year effort to improve its key business processes and create the approaches, tools and technology to support them. Ultimately, this effort will drive connectivity and support the company's growth. In launching the effort, a team of hundreds of Cargill people - led by five senior leaders including Corporate Vice President and Chief Information Officer Rita Heise and Corporate Vice President John Geisler - spent seven months building a strategy that outlines an approach to both business process and information technology. Hear how thought leadership and influence have helped the team meet the early challenge of leading the organization through this change, which redefines how information gets stored and shared across a global company.

From a business perspective, Wells Fargo's IT organization had to change. Scott Dillon, EVP & CTO, knew that the transformation was "how," and not "if." Availability needed to go up, costs down, and the business needed to see and have input on the "How." Sounds simple on paper, but complex and challenging in action. Join Dillon in his session to learn how in six short months they reorganized, rebalanced, and revived to make IT transparent to the business. The remaining challenge: making sure the transformation is adopted long term and stays a part of the culture.

Session discovery topics:

• Fixing the (mis)perception that IT invests unwisely - longer than an overnight fix
• Rebalancing and reorganizing the model by creating business relationship managers with "teeth"
• To standardize, or not to standardize - giving the business a choice
• Implementing supply and demand technology - the more I know, the better I can do

Since its beginning in 1938, Schneider National has been a thought leader in the transportation and logistics industry. Schneider has taken a consistently proactive stance toward improving its operating efficiency, expanding services, growing globally and fostering a high performance culture. Over the last several years Schneider embarked on an in-depth, holistic strategy to position the company to achieve its operating goals and long-term business objectives. Judy Lemke is lead Executive Sponsor for this comprehensive transformation (dubbed "Quest") that will quite literally change every aspect of the Schneider organization - jobs, processes, software, technology - and culture. Now two years down a four-year road, Lemke will talk about approach, successes and failures, and key lessons learned. She will talk about metrics, good governance, business agility, and the importance of being intertwined with the business to succeed in a project of this size and scope.

Many large companies have evolved through acquisition or by spawning new start-ups in a stand-alone environment. As a result they frequently have very fragmented, complex landscapes and many business unit/functional silos and related technology environments. Customers are increasingly stressing the importance of seamless execution and information as part of a supplier's value proposition. To further drive customer value and growth, companies are integrating their divisional offerings into bundled solutions to meet customer needs globally. But CIOs and business leaders are confronted with a fragmented data and process landscape that makes it virtually impossible to act as "one company" in the eyes of the customer. Join Rob Tabb, VP & CIO, Ecolab and Chris Vitek, VP, Global Business Process as they discuss an approach to establish a technology vision and execution plan to enable a "one company" value proposition.

As CEOs increasingly look to the CIO to deliver strategic business leadership that drives top line growth, process driven simplification and the innovative use of technology are key principles to support growth while maintaining high levels of service. Join Susan Watson, VP, Radical Simplification and Innovation, Enterprise On Demand at IBM, for a discussion on how the global CIO community at IBM is bolstering the culture of radical simplification and innovation across the globally integrated enterprise through a variety of processes, programs and tools.

Session discovery topics:

• The principals of radical simplification
• A framework to enable radical simplification and innovation
• The role of enterprise wide collaboration for simplification and innovation
• Business benefits of simplification and innovation - in any economy

According to Peter Drucker, the most important work of the executive is to identify the changes that have already happened… and enterprise CIOs know that the consumer appetite for social media has firmly landed in the hands of the global workforce. John Johnson's CIO team at Intel is at the forefront of harnessing the opportunities of these new ways of work. With one of the most mobile (and entrepreneurial) workforces on the planet, the implications for establishing corporate objectives and developing productivity standards around social engineering are critical. From Intel's grassroots movement in 2003, to the 2006 Internal Innovation Zone blog, to an exponential rise of wiki activity today, Intel has had a healthy experience working through the impact of social media on the enterprise. Join this best practice discussion with Johnson on what can be accomplished by connecting the right people with the right information-rich tools.

According to a Bain and Company study, only 8% of companies deliver a superior experience - from the customer's point of view. Those that are successful design the right propositions for the right customers. They deliver those propositions at the lowest system cost. And they develop the institutional capabilities to do it again and again. Retail industry leader Robert Willett, CEO Best Buy International & Enterprise CIO for Best Buy, has been able to support his organizational strategies very successfully in this arena. Moderated by Kemp Powers, Willett will discuss his approaches and lessons learned - including achieving and maintaining the balance between gathering customer information and respecting privacy, and reaching multi-generational customers using multiple channels who have very different needs and expectations when it comes to technology.

Session discovery topics:

• Choosing the right change strategy for a specific problem
• Dealing with the challenges of changes impacting thousands of staff
• "Closing the loop" to ensure compliance and progress
• Preparing for setbacks and failures - protecting the change through turbulence
• Recognizing when your strategy for change needs to change

As owner of the nation's longest running satirical comedy theater and author of Innovation at the Speed of Laughter, John Sweeney knows how to make people laugh. In fact, more than 4 million people have enjoyed the shows at the Brave New Workshop since it opened its doors in 1958. For the past 10 years Sweeney has transferred the Theater's innovative approach to comedy to the corporate world. Using his improvisational skills to teach a person to think outside the box - Sweeney challenges communication styles and traditional thought processes, taking the audience on an "outward bound for the mind experience." In the intriguing format of the CIO Executive Summit, this session on innovation and collaboration will show (and not tell) the eight secrets to world class idea generation. Sweeney will entertain and challenge the audience to open themselves to new ideas, change, and innovation using an interactive approach.