CIO Insight Staff

In a previous column, I discussed how to identify toxic managers using tools from Jean Lipman-Blumen’s insightful book, “The Allure of Toxic Leaders.” If you still can’t recognize a Toxie, I strongly recommend seeing the film “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” a documentary about a company that, while it wasn’t even close to […]

Lots of companies talk about integrating their business units as an obvious business goal, but the reality of tying together disparate divisions can prove costly and disruptive. Technology is often expected to smooth the transition, and that places a heavy burden on the cio. Here’s how Bob Bongiorno, senior vice president and CIO of employer […]

Opportunity Software as a service can take some pressure off the IT department. At one time or another, we’ve all been presented with the confounding choice of whether we should rent or buy. Whether it’s a home, a car, or even a tuxedo, the questions remain pretty much the same. Can I afford to buy […]

Think Big, Act Small: How America’s Best Performing Companies Keep the Start- Up Spirit Alive By Jason Jennings Portfolio, May 2005 288 pages, $24.95 For nearly a quarter-century, dating back to In Search of Excellence, management consultants-turned-authors have followed the same formula: Find a handful of extremely successful companies and try to determine what they […]

Due Diligence: The Meaning of the Web By Eric Nee Technology, like life, doesn’t always turn out the way we expect it to. Consider the case of the Semantic Web, the vision of how to create order from the chaos of the Internet, espoused by the Father of the Internet himself, Tim Berners-Lee. Dependent on […]

Digital Phoenix: Why the Information Economy Collapsed and How It Will Rise Again By Bruce Abramson The MIT Press, May 2005 368 pages, $34.95 The retelling of the collapse of the information economy—most notably the bursting of the Internet stock bubble—is less interesting than what consultant Abramson thinks the future will look like. He argues […]

With the job market a little healthier in most regions than it has been in four years, it’s time to gird your loins and participate in a dangerous but useful workplace sport: purging the toxic waste among you. While only a small minority of all the managers in large American organizations, the presence of Toxies […]

Medicare, the biggest health care payer in the US, is scheduled to cut reimbursement by as much as 26 percent by 2011. If the cuts go into effect, some 70 percent of physicians predicted they would put off purchasing electronic systems. In fact, physician leaders say that the timing of the cuts comes at just […]

It’s no surprise when a government agency has trouble putting together a complex information technology system. Between budget constraints, project requirements that are guaranteed to be odd, and often an inability to attract the cream of the IT management crop, major government IT projects are more remarkable when they work correctly than when they don’t. […]

God help us; we’re in the hands of engineers.” – Dr. Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park In my last column I explained how organizations that enforce the strictest corporate security are often the ones that end up being the least secure. Contemporary technology and the way contemporary technologists implement it are partially to blame, but most […]

“Limits are what we fear.” … R. Buckminster Fuller The organizations that enforce the strictest corporate security are often the ones that are the least secure. With the exception of organizations whose very mission is security (say, the Coast Guard, intelligence agencies, banks or body shops that rent uniformed personnel as their mission), the more […]