The New Kids On The Block In The Digital Era

This post was originally featured in Digitalist Magazine.

The digital era will force new thinking and mindsets on the corporate leaders of today and the new CxO roles of tomorrow. Here is a portrait of three new kids on the block.

First, a quick history lesson: It took radio 38 years to reach 50 million users. The color TV achieved the same number in 13 years. Facebook managed it in 3.5 years, and the app-based game Angry Birds did it in just 35 days. The emergence of these new age media channels and technologies like blockchain, Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence will have an impact on all dimensions of politics, ecology, social, technology, and economy.

New thinking needed

New pacemaker technologies are one of the driving forces behind the shift that is happening in today’s business reality. Digital ventures are scaling-out and changing entire industries. The pressures associated with this manifest themselves in many measurable realities. The average company lifespan on the S&P 500 index has decreased by 25% in the last decade, whereas the number of billion-dollar private companies rose by more than 900% in the last six years—a good indicator for the vast number of new players established companies are facing these days. To cope with these external factors organizations have started to adapt—in the form of appointing new specialized leadership roles.

The most prominent examples of the past two years might be the chief digital officer and the chief transformation officer. These two roles have already been standing in the spotlight of every consulting company with almost interchangeable qualities accounted to both roles.

New kids around ecosystems, UX, and automation

There are also a few areas just beginning to spin out their own CxO. Here are the new kids on the block:

• Chief ecosystem officer: We see great importance in the opening of companies towards a digital ecosystem as the concept of open innovation has matured in co-innovation partnerships on open platforms creating network effects thanks to the wisdom of a more digital-minded crowd. It is the chief ecosystem officer’s job to span the boundaries between industries and facilitate the merge of such, since most innovation happens at the edges of industries. Fore-runner startup Happy Melly was one of the first to appoint a chief ecosystem officer. It was Jurgen Appelo’s job to get people moving by bringing them together.
• Chief (user) experience officer: This job title already co-exists in an early manifestation—the chief design officer. However, design is only one part out of many that make up for the overall user experience of a company. Empathy will even more become a core attribute to transform functionality into meaningful experiences and simple usage into desirability. CEOs have already started to grasp the importance of a satisfying end-to-end user experience and will soon begin to name their CExO. One of the first companies is Microsoft with its chief experience officer Julie Larson-Green who is, for example, responsible for the entire user experience across all Microsoft Office programs.
• Chief automation officer: As cognitive systems, along with artificial intelligence and machine learning, start to change the way processes are executed in an organization, companies will hand over the responsibility to someone managing that discipline in a smart and sustainable fashion. When IT is covered by the CIO and operational processes are managed by the COO, a CAO will bridge the gap and ensure the planning and execution of an organization-wide automation strategy. Enterprises can achieve measurable optimizations quickly, use resources more efficiently, and reconnect siloed departments.

The specialization of the C-Suite

With the three above-mentioned examples of new CxO roles, the directory boards of established companies will receive an overhaul. Even though not many companies have appointed these ranks yet, the need for them or taking the role by a related existing CxO will become omnipresent in the short-term future.