Tech Updates: Insights from the Global CEO Survey 2012

This study is based on face-to-face conversations with more than 1,700 chief executive officers in 64 countries.

Our key findings

CEOs have a new strategy in the unending war for talent.
To engage customers as individuals, CEOs are building analytical muscle to respond with relevance and immediacy.
Extensive partnering is providing the edge CEOs need to take on radical innovation.

Empowering employees through values

For CEOs, organizational openness offers tremendous upside potential — empowered employees, free-flowing ideas, more creativity and innovation, happier customers, better results. But openness also comes with more risk. As rigid controls loosen, organizations need a strong sense of purpose and shared beliefs to guide decision making. Perhaps most important, organizations must help employees develop traits to excel in this type of environment.

Engaging customers as individuals

The pursuit of customer knowledge is as old as business itself, but where and how those insights are found and used are radically changing. To effectively engage an individual consumer, client or citizen, organizations must weave together insights about the whole person — from sources they likely haven’t consulted in the past. They will need stronger analytics capabilities to uncover patterns and answer questions they never thought to ask. Client-facing staff and channels must be equipped to act on those insights. And since customers are increasingly mobile, organizations must be active there too, ready to engage in the context of the moment.

Amplifying innovation with partnerships

Rising complexity and escalating competition have made partnering a core innovation strategy for many organizations. But to enable sustained, fruitful innovation partnerships, organizations will need deeper, more

integrated relationships. Partnering organizations will have to share collaborative environments, share data — and share control. And even when the organization is performing well, CEOs must occasionally break from the status quo and introduce new external catalysts, unexpected partners and some intentionally disruptive thinking.

Few more fact from the survey:

Technology is now driving more organizational change than any other force — even the economy.

Technology pushes to the top Of all the external forces that could impact their organizations over the next three to five years, CEOs now see technology change as most critical.

More than half of all CEOs see human capital, customer relationships and innovation as key sources of sustained economic value.

Ironically, the rise of digital, social and mobile technology is making people more important. To create greater value, CEOs must take advantage of newly enabled connections with and among employees, customers and partners.