CDOs Are Reaching New Heights — and Quickly

There aren’t a lot of chief digital officers around, but the position has already become something of a springboard to a chief executive or president’s title.

There are at least seven recent moves by a chief digital officer (CDO) into top management slots. Mostly, people shift from one company to the next, a la Michael Bloom (@Michael_Bloom), who was CDO at Wenner Media and is now the CEO at Guardian News and Media, NA, or David Cautin, the former CDO at NYSE Euronext, now CEO at kgb, a directory service company. People also move up the ladder in their own company, like Paul Gunning, who was a chief digital officer at Tribal DDB and global CDO for DDB and is now the CEO of DDB Chicago.

Given that there were only 75 CDOs in 2011, having several of them move into top management positions so quickly might seem surprising. It might also reflect title inflation: would DDB Chicago have had its own CEO a decade ago? But David Mathison, who is tracking the rise of the chief digital officer through his firm, says it reflects the digital reality of business today, and the needs businesses have for blending digital and business savvy.

“When you look at their backgrounds and skill sets, they’re coming up from entrepreneurial and managerial backgrounds,” Mathison says.

Now, keep in mind that Mathison, founder of the Chief Digital Officer Club, is also helping to create CDOs. His company not only does research on the position, but also runs recruiting searches for companies that want to hire CDOs. Mathison says that hiring has picked up this year, to the point where a new CDO is named almost every business day. He thinks there will be 500 CDOs worldwide by year’s end.

The growth is scattered, but much of it is happening in Europe. Mathison says that’s because European companies are catching up to their U.S. counterparts; prior to this year, 88% of the CDOs he was tracking worked for American companies. Another 7% were in Europe, and the remainder in Asia.