Global CIO Virtual Executive Summit

Whether you define your business strategy as multinational, global or transnational your biggest challenge as a CIO or CTO responsible for operations and teams across multiple countries is balance. Balancing standardization with localization, centralization with decentralization, globalization and localization. And your opportunities lie in identifying processes, products, systems and talent that create and accelerate value on a global scale that will have worldwide impact.  As many physical and intangible boundaries have recently become  blurred there’s never been a more challenging (and more exciting) time to be in the driver’s seat of global IT and technology strategy and teams.   Join your peer Global Business Leaders to discuss:

• Crafting a transformation strategy on a global scale

• What it means to be a global business leader in today's environment

• Developing a framework to balance standardization with customization 

• Allocating authority and decision rights across a global organization 

• Growing and developing a glocalized leadership bench

[Agenda not yet finalized]

As shadow IT becomes more prevalent and inevitable, allowing business units to have direct control over technology and analytics initiatives is becoming less of the exception and more of a key strategy for accelerating innovation and transformation.  Today there are more employees customizing and building digital solutions outside of IT than inside IT.  While it's not only global organizations who face this scenario,  the IT and technology leaders of large, global organizations are faced with a substantially more complex set of tradeoffs in balancing value from business driven technology initiatives with the inherent risks.  Join this interactive boardroom to discuss:

• How to leverage  the new rules of engagement between IT, the business and shadow IT to drive and accelerate transformation

• Shifting the role of IT from the operator to curator and orchestrator 

• Adapting the operating and governance models to balance autonomy and innovation with control, documentation, security and reliability

• Reallocating leadership and decision rights across a global organization

• Cultivating and evangelizing citizen technologists and analysts on a global scale

[Agenda not yet finalized]

Even before the crisis organizations realized that to survive and thrive in a volatile and ambiguous future they needed to embrace agility at scale, and many were already in the process of deconstructing their existing operating model to be more agile.  All the research agrees that agile companies outperformed all others in adapting to the impact of COVID-19.  Now many companies have the added layer of also crafting an operating model for anywhere operations - operations that support customers everywhere, enable employees everywhere and manage the deployment of business services across distributed infrastructure. This requires changes in the technology infrastructure, management practices, security and governance policies, and employee and customer engagement models.

• How to create greater transparency across a complex organization to make better operating model decisions

• Defining and inventorying roles and responsibilities to curate a sustainable value driven, dispersed and hybrid workforce 

• Organizational structures and decision rights that foster agile, support dispersed teams and eliminate silos

• Structuring a remote workforce program and playbook that ensure cost efficiencies and productivity gains outweigh the drawbacks of working in isolation

 [Agenda not yet finalized]

The pre-crisis location-based model for satellite offices, global inhouse centers (GIC) and centers of excellence were honed by MNC’s over decades, but within the span of a few weeks the pandemic rendered the model obsolete and irrevocably changed how leaders now need to view their global operations. Global business leaders have an unexpected opportunity to reinvent their international operations and create a new more diversified location footprint that unlocks both financial and qualitative opportunities, manages risk and builds flexibility and resilience into the operating model. Join this interactive boardroom to share ideas and perspectives on:

• The need for a new mindset for viewing global operations and location strategy

• Diversifying the global footprint and risks, and leveraging the opportunity to test new markets

• Reimagining the GIC’s operating model to maximize value and balance risk

• How the regionalization of product value chains will impact location strategy

• The impact of transformational technology on workplace and office design

[Agenda not yet finalized]

In an environment where the pace of competition and volatility is increasing faster than ever, the benefits of globally standardized technology and processes can simultaneously be both a competitive advantage and an impediment.  Global business leaders are tasked with finding and driving the right balance between leveraging global economies of scale through standardization while needing to be locally responsive and perceptive. Join this important boardroom of Global Business Leaders to discuss:

• Balancing competing needs and requirements in different markets

• Identifying and documenting the technology, processes and workflows that create value from global standardization, those that can simply be consistent and those that can be customized

• Creating a framework for global standardization and regional customization decisions

• Implementing a global process owner (GPO) model to optimize processes and drive value on a global scale

• International M&A’s, JV’s and partnerships - balancing integration and standardization with customization and localization

• Managing and minimizing technical debt while being regionally responsive

[Agenda not yet finalized]

The combination of technologies that are being enhanced, enabled and adopted because of 5G will inevitably drive new and unforeseen paradigms that will impact entire industries, ecosystems and economies.  With the hindsight of 4G some of the disruption is predictable…and we also know that much of it is not.   Your ability to quickly identify and prepare for inflection in your industry and ecosystem will be key to long term success.  Join this thought-provoking discussion to consider:

• Industry 4.0’s opportunities, challenges and global impact

• How the Internet of Skills will impact entire industries and breakdown geographical boundaries and silos in global organizations

• How to leverage opportunities while recognizing and addressing global societal risks 

• Regional governments’ role in spurring innovation, setting standards and minimizing disparity

• Economic and geopolitical requirements needed to realize the full potential of 5G

[Agenda not yet finalized]

One of the most important roles CIO’s and CTO’s can play in cybersecurity in organizations is to always be questioning existing assumptions and strategies.  When it comes to cyber warfare, what used to work yesterday probably won’t work tomorrow thus making it critical to identify and question established assumptions and strategies which can often be exploited. Global enterprises preparing for a future where they will be increasingly targeted by sophisticated attacks need to reimagine their approach to understanding, planning and executing for resilience. Come prepared to challenge your own assumptions at this interactive boardroom that will discuss:

• Identifying your organization’s and security team’s underlying assumptions

• Rethinking how you devise your playbook and reorient from scenario based to impact based

• Creating an adaptable playbook process that can be regularly rolled out across a large global organization

• Reassessing business priorities and adapting response to new operating models

• Integrating and breaking down the silos of business continuity and cybersecurity to drive resilience 

• Defining roles, responsibilities, workflows and messaging for the next normal of cyber attacks

[Agenda not yet finalized]

It’s no secret that adopting agile methodologies and processes requires a significant shift in culture and mindset across the enterprise.  This is a challenge for all organizations but none so much as global organizations with large teams distributed throughout different countries and cultures.  CIOs leading enterprise agile adoption need to manage complex decision-making mechanisms, multiple globally dispersed teams and numerous stakeholders. To successfully scale agile globally, they must change traditional leadership and decision making cultures, invest in coaching that is adaptable to regional differences, focus on business objectives at all levels and implement metrics that measure success both globally and regionally.  Join this discussion to share insights on:

• Evolving the operating model to embrace agility and innovation at scale

• Driving a global agile culture that is locally perceptive and nuanced

• Establishing team norms and expectations across a global team          

• Identifying and developing local leaders and middle management with the attributes and mindset required to drive an agile and innovative culture

• Embedding agile into globally standardized and locally customized processes and workflows

[Agenda not yet finalized]

One of the few areas not currently being negatively impacted by belt tightening is AI programs as most large global companies have either increased or maintained their level of investment in AI initiatives.  This is the case despite many enterprises’ AI efforts not being realized.  Now is the time leaders need to keep the momentum going by identifying sources of transformative business value and moving from experimentation to developing a robust enterprise-wide capability that is a source of global competitive agility and growth.  Join this strategic discussion that will address:

• Going fast by slowing down - establishing the foundation and processes for success 

• Assembling multidisciplinary collaborative teams organized for global scale

• Creating the vision and breaking down the silos that impede value creation and scale

• Determining size and aligning AI investments and budgeting for integration and adoption 

• Global AI governance - ensuring accountability in multinational regulatory and legal environments

• Leveraging AI orchestration to accelerate and and drive value from AI operationalization

[Agenda not yet finalized]

Cloud is no longer an if but a how fast for most large organizations.  With growing worldwide footprints global enterprises also need international data storage to keep applications performing the same for all their users in any location and that comply with regional regulations.  With more choices and capabilities in cloud services, also comes increased complexity and issues for consideration.  Join this boardroom that will discuss:

• Structuring and navigating a cloud strategy on a global scale

• Crafting a strategy to evolve from hybrid to distributed

• Strategies to comply with multiple regional regulations and expectations

• Leveraging edge computing in a highly distributed and cost constrained model

• Developing end to end capabilities and identifying new roles and skills that will be needed in an evolving cloud landscape

[Agenda not yet finalized]

As global enterprises become increasingly entrenched in remote working and cloud deployments, technology is no longer an enabler to business — it is the business. New operating models resulting from accelerated digital initiatives, combined with an emergence of digital nationalism, have changed not only how value is created but also the priorities of both the threat actors and governments undertaking resilience planning at the sector and nation state level.  Companies are now operating on an entirely new global threat surface that IT alone can not be responsible for.  Join this visionary discussion with a world renowned Thought Leader on global cybersecurity to examine:

• Evaluating your global digital risks and dependencies with a regional lens

• Simplifying business processes to reduce threat vectors and digital risk

• Partnering with regional and global stakeholders to ensure a resilient ecosystem

• Leading a security culture crusade across a large, geographically diversified company

• Developing a security leadership bench with a glocal mindset

• Redefining the role of the CSO to embed security throughout a global organization

[Agenda not yet confirmed]

Meet virtually for in-depth conversations with your colleagues