A Recap of SIMCAC's and HMG Strategy’s 2018 Washington, D.C. CIO Executive Leadership Summit
 

For the past 6 years, SIMCAC has proudly partnered with HMG Strategy to make this event possible. The theme for this year’s summit – ‘Lead, Reimagine, Reinvent – Driving a Culture of Genius for Success’ – resonated well with the private and public-sector CIOs and technology executives that were in attendance. With the CIO at the center of the digital transformation journey, he or she is uniquely positioned to work with the CEO and the board to deliver fearless leadership, and fuse emerging technologies with process redesign along with the necessary people skills in order to succeed. In fact, several of the speakers spoke to how the CIO must act as ‘The CEO of Technology’ and lead the organization’s business transformation efforts.

Former Amazon executive Wes Arens helped set the tone with his keynote address at the beginning of the day which focused on how the company’s success has been centered around cultivating a customer-centric culture of innovation along with lessons that other companies can draw from Amazon’s success.

Speakers also discussed how emerging technologies such as blockchain, artificial intelligence, machine learning and analytics can help companies to identify and build new business models that can differentiate them in the market.

A panel of leading search executives discussed the traits that make CIOs and other technology executives successful. These include an ability to deliver results from innovation initiatives, along with a willingness to disrupt yourself as an executive and apply those insights to helping transform the enterprise.