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White Papers and Reports
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Gap
"In the late 1960's, during a time of social and political ferment, the first Gap store was opened to provide young consumers who were into denim and the Doors with jeans that fit and music that rocked. Now, during the first decade of the 21st Century, Gap must move from its original purpose -- giving power to the people -- and gain power from its people."
-- from a white paper on Gap's workforce and internal communications: "Putting People First -- Redesigning the Fabric of Gap's Culture" |
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AT&T
"Being a CIO is one of the toughest jobs in corporate America today. Indeed, the average tenure of a Fortune 500 CIO is less than two years. Why? Because the CIO must place risky, big-dollar technology bets on an unknowable future. Because the CIO has to understand and work with unproven technology that often takes much longer to integrate and install than originally forecast. And because the CIO’s technology choices must cut costs and generate revenue simultaneously. All this – aligning technology to meet the business demands of cost-containment, customer satisfaction, and compliance, as well as coping with the explosion of new products and services – must take place in near real-time. And the environment is tough, too. Markets are disappearing, combining, cannibalizing. The workforce needs to be retrained, redistributed, or disbanded altogether. Factories and plants are closing, and jobs are disappearing. It’s overwhelming, sometimes even a little paralyzing. Clearly it’s a complex, stressful, and challenging job. And it has become more complex, stressful, and challenging in recent years because of the even greater demands that are being placed on the CIO. So how are we doing? Study after study shows that, by a two-to-one majority, technology executives feel they are getting bad grades from their bosses despite unprecedented productivity fueled by technology. The need to retain and gain market share today exceeds any one person’s scope, no matter how talented they are. And enterprises across all industries are not simply tweaking their business models – they’re being forced to engage in radical top-to-bottom reengineering. Which explains why IT is central to business transformation. And why CIOs and the networking infrastructures they run are central to meeting the challenge of ongoing business transformation."
-- from a
book, “2020Vision: A World Interconnected,” written with AT&T’s CIO / CTO |
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SBC
"Like politicians after Watergate, military commanders after Vietnam and Catholic clergy entangled in sex-abuse scandals, American CEOs today are laboring under an unprecedented cloud of scrutiny, skepticism and disillusionment brought on by the outrageous misdeeds of a handful of highly visible executives ... The bottom line is that the days of cotton-candy corporate profiles, lollipop CEO covers and sugary stock-pumping TV interviews are over. The media won't soon forget Enron, Tyco, Global Crossing or WorldCom. And it will take a long time before business catches a break in print or on the air. Politicians have yet to recover from the credibility collapse of Watergate 30 years ago. Executives beware."
-- from a white paper, "The Ghosts of Watergate -- Business Credibility and Increased Media Scrutiny in a Time of Economic Uncertainty," prepared for the chairman and CEO of SBC |
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