The emergence of the Chief Digital Information Officer role and its influence on the future of digital transformation

As digital transformation, innovation and technology advance at a staggering pace, organisations need to rapidly adapt and ‘look beyond’ the horizon to remain relevant, competitive and proactive. Organisations are challenged by the complexities of competing digitally — keeping pace with agile delivery while remediating legacy infrastructure and addressing the need to transform technologies, processes, people, culture and organisational structures in a sustainable and holistic way. This paper aims to explore the leadership requirements and behaviours that organisations may wish to consider in the future and introduces an emergent role in the C-Suite ecosystem, namely the chief digital information officer (CDIO), which blends the triumvirate of digital business, technology and people/culture and shifts towards a sustainable business model rooted in value proposition, value creation and delivery and value capture. The discussion also builds on the five dimensions of logic and perspective, on the basis of which existing CIO, CTOs and CDOs define and differentiate their roles, suggesting how a CDIO may be differentiated from its peers with respect to value orientation and goal achievement as an example, while reflecting on the successes and challenges observed to date having practical experience in introducing chief digital information officers into the organisation.