Hollywood Has the Vision, Why doesn’t the CIO or EA?

Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Gallactica, James Bond, 24, and so many more films are creative and future looking. Indeed, Hollywood seems to be the global repository for creative talent and vision. In Hollywood, they are able to see things in the future or in fact, mold the future in ways that the rest of can’t.

But isn’t the role of the Chief Information Officer (CIO)and Chief Enterprise Architect (CEA) to not only to meet the mission needs of today, but also to plan for the technology needs of tomorrow? From the technology perspective, it is the CIO and CEA that especially need to be looking prospectively, with innovation and foresight, to understand the mission needs of tomorrow and what technologies can fulfill those needs.

Moreover, it is apparently, not only technology executives that seem to struggle with planning and vision, but there seem to be so many examples of organizations in the public and private sectors reacting to events, rather than “thinking out of the box” and proactively preparing for what could be (9-11, Hurricane Katrina, the auto industry, the stock market bubble a few years ago, are but a few in recent times).

Yes, it’s easy to talk with 20-20 hindsight, but are many of these events really so hard to envision and plan for. Are we so fat and happy that we can’t see beyond today?

User-centric EA believes that we must not only meet the needs of today, but that we must have vision and creativity and courage to see beyond today. This means that we need to envision not just what is, but what could be. It mandates that we increase our capabilities and competencies, so that we can really go with our minds and innovation “where no man has gone before”.

Hollywood Has the Vision, Why doesn’t the CIO or EA?