‘IT doesn’t matter any more’ was always the wrong debate. It seems to me that organisations divide broadly into two camps. Those where IT can’t really offer much opportunity to drive bottom line growth and those where technology breathes life into the organisation and moves it forward every day.

The growth of outsourcing and the increasing standardisation of applications have undoubtedly made it easier (at least for the second generation adopters) to get the basics right but, as we all know, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

There have always been organisations and industries where IT never really mattered and maybe these structural changes have made it matter even less. For instance, manufacturing industries have rarely found sustainable competitive advantage through innovating with technology. And if this is where you are, then achievement in your role is going to be about driving incremental improvement, maintaining service levels and reducing cost year on year. Nothing wrong with that, and CIOs in this space need to be great leaders to deliver against that backdrop. However, if driving bottom line performance gets you out of bed in the morning then get yourself into an industry where technology has the potential to make a real and fundamental difference. And from where I’m sitting there’s a huge number that fit into that category.

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