Seven Major CEO Concerns CIOs Should Address - Slide 7

Many long-term concerns are causing CEOs to think harder about business and industry sustainability. Examples include the massive human scale of the developing economies like China, the recent year’s volatility of commodity prices for oil, precious metals and other resources, and the finite nature of newly important mineral resources such as lithium and neodymium. These factors add to long-term concerns about oil reserves, climate change, waste and the increasing regulations and fiscal interventions governments are gradually placing on perceived negative externalities. These examples show how CEOs are learning to work with a sustainability mind-set and profit from it.

Though reducing the power consumed in IT operations remains important, for most organizations the more important and strategic issue is how IT can help the business to operate more sustainably. IT must learn how to engage and add value. CIOs should order high-level, long-term sustainability business systems and information architecture development plans.