MIT Sloan Management Review

The Emergence of Chief Digital Officers

April 29, 2013 | Robert Berkman

A new force is stepping into the C-suite — an upstart whose arrival signals how a company will manage social media and other digital technologies: the chief digital officer, or CDO. Appearing in many industries, CDOs share a similar mandate: provide oversight and strategy, and create a big-picture view of how social and digital technologies can make a difference to the entire organization.

One industry where CDOs are making headway is in higher education. The increased interest and activity in delivery of online classes and the rise of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are spurring administrators to take a deeper look at the role of social and other digital technologies in delivering educational content.

One newly appointed chief digital officer is Sree Sreenivasan at Columbia University. Sreenivasan, who was appointed to his position in July 2012 and reports to the Provost, told us that Columbia created his position to have a single person be responsible for cataloging, coordinating and shepherding what was going on in digital delivery of education, and to think about all of these changes from a broader strategic level.

Video: The Digital Transformation of Health Care

April 26, 2013 | Lori Beer (WellPoint), interviewed by Michael Fitzgerald

As the U.S. health-care industry goes through the most significant change it has faced in decades, one of the country’s largest health insurers, WellPoint, is responding by using technology to change its business model. Lori Beer, WellPoint’s executive vice president of specialty businesses and information technology, talks about how technology lowers costs and helps doctors and nurses be more efficient and effective.

Beer explains how WellPoint, which operates a number of Blue Cross and Blue Shield units, is using analytics to devise ways to help health-care providers work more efficiently. The company is the first commercial adopter of IBM’s Watson technology, made famous by beating Jeopardy champions in head-to-head competition; WellPoint is among other things using Watson to help diagnose patients. WellPoint is also looking at aggressively expanding use of technologies that allow telemedicine and home-based medical care, which should help cut some of the costs and complications of people with chronic conditions.