Energy Companies Need More Digital Executives
Established companies can't rely on stealing ideas from startups.
This is what the future looks like.
Photographer: Christopher Pike/Bloomberg
A recently published Strategy& study examines the role of “chief digital officer” in the world’s 2,500 largest publicly listed companies. Chief among the consultancy’s findings: 2016 “was the high-water mark in CDO hiring” (though their 2018 data run only through the first quarter of the year, a spokesperson says). One reason for that peak, the study’s authors say, is that “as transformation becomes part of the core business, the next step will be for the CDO to disappear.” Marc Bain noted in Quartz that these days, becoming “digitally fluent” is “the responsibility of the entire organization.”
It’s a useful study, and digital transformations will be companywide and probably become a matter of culture as much as a matter of specific, defined implementation of software and processes. But drawing on insights from a BloombergNEF survey completed last week, I’m not so sure that the role will disappear quite yet.