According to the IBM Global CIO Study: The New Voice of the CIO, today’s CIOs spend an impressive 55 percent of their time on activities that spur innovation. These activities include generating buy-in for innovative plans, implementing new technologies and managing non-technology business issues. The remaining 45 percent is spent on essential, more traditional CIO tasks related to managing the ongoing technology environment. This includes reducing IT costs, mitigating enterprise risks and leveraging automation to reduce costs elsewhere in the business.

After thousands of interviews, IBM found that successful CIOs actually blend three pairs of roles. These roles seem contradictory, but they are actually complementary. To characterise each role, IBM has coined a term that describes its dominant quality.

At any given time, a CIO is:

• An Insightful Visionary and an Able Pragmatist

• A Savvy Value Creator and a Relentless Cost Cutter

• A Collaborative Business Leader and an Inspiring IT Manager.

We are focused here on the former. The Insightful Visionary is active in setting strategy and helps the business explore how technology can drive innovation. Key Visionary actions are to: push business/technology integration, champion innovation and extend CIO influence.

It’s not enough to just plan for innovation – it needs a robust foundation. When acting as an Insightful Visionary, a CIO is perceptive, promoting a broad technology agenda to help the business profit from leading-edge initiatives. At its core is the source of the insight – business information.