The IBM CEO Study: The Director’s Cut

Francis Ford Coppola edited plenty in the Director’s version of his classic The Godfather. The studio made him add almost 50 minutes back to the movie when it was released.

I smiled when Jon Reed shared with me IBM’s CEO Study (register here for a copy). It is a nice read, but I would love to see what was left at the Director’s cutting table from IBM’s notes and audio tapes from “speaking face-to-face with 1,709 CEOs, general managers and senior public sector leaders around the globe”

I am going to hazard a few guesses:

a) Why are Apple, Google, Microsoft, HP, Oracle doubling down on hardware? Will IBM also reverse course?

b) The new digital customer demands technology in every product. Our R&D group is spending more on technology in our products than our CIO, but very little of that is with IBM

c) Our marketing staff recently went to an Oracle customer experience event in New York and a Salesforce Social Enterprise event in London. They think the product centric solutions will be a better place to start than a strategy project

d) My CIO tells me the Amazon and the Google data centers are the most efficient in the world. I may be showing my age but I used to think IBM’s were?

e) John Chambers keeps calling me and saying no one does collaboration better than Cisco.

f) I read in an airline magazine open source analytical tools are now some of the best in the world. True?

g) My VP of HR tells me to get to strategic HR we should not renew our BPO contract and migrate instead to Duffield’s company…

h) My Asian executives tell me they could run much leaner with NetSuite, but our IBM rep there keeps telling them to stick with SAP

i) I need to cut the IT budget by 20%. IBM is one of our biggest line items. Has our VP of Procurement talked to you?

j) You know I am ex McKinsey. For the first time in my career I am seeing all kinds of boutique firms walk our halls – Frog Design, Doblin, Bluewolf. No McKinsey, Accenture, IBM. What’s going on?

k) I saw an analyst report which said everyone who writes big checks for old technology like DB2, lives on a “Dumber Planet”. Should we be offended? 

l) Between friends, what really happened at Augusta this year? :)

Update: In the spirit of the post, here are a couple more that got left on my editing floor:

m) I went home and bragged to my kids I would have a Watson assistant at the office. My son has had Apple Siri for a year, my daughter will soon have Google Now, and I still have no Watson.

n) GM plans to go  from 90% outsourced IT to 90% internal staff in 3 years. Why shouldn't we?