Breaking Silos episode 6: Self-inflicted uncertainty and overlooked IT infrastructure
Rajvir Nagra 
Date published: Mar 08, 23
Welcome to Breaking Silos!
We've launched this podcast to help people within digital roles address the big challenges they face and discuss the industry's key themes by leveraging today's best ideas in business and technology to break down old barriers to collaboration and business success.
Each week you will be joined by one of our three Breaking Silos hosts from Ideagen and together you will learn from experts across diverse industries to save time, cut costs and simplify your workflows. We aim to help you build a more connected, digital-first tomorrow.
Thornton May, Founder of The Digital Value Institute and CIO columnist has a lively discussion with Ideagen's Raj Nagra about how CIOs and IT teams should embrace uncertainty and the ways IT infrastructure is often overlooked across businesses. The discussion includes:
- What the role of a CIO is during economic downturns
- Identifying sources of uncertainty
- Common infrastructure oversights
- How CIOs can create order in the chaos
- “Digital steppingstones” that can be taken prior to digital transformation
- Thornton’s top tips for how CIOs can be a stable pillar in their business, plus much more!
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About Thornton
Thornton May is a futurist, author, and educator. At Dartmouth College, Keio University, Tokyo, and the Centre for Japanese Studies at the University of Michigan, Thornton studied Japanese technology policies and practices. Living in Tokyo, Thornton worked at a series of global Japanese companies managing “emerging technology” investments.
Thornton was hired by noted futurist Alvin Toffler at Toffler Associates who designed and delivered the strategic plans for South Korea and Singapore. These plans specified the technology investments necessary to sustain economic dominance in the twenty-first century.
Returning to America, Thornton lead technology research at the Nolan Norton Institute. His research team is credited for coining the phrase “Chief Information Officer” in 1981. He went on to co-found and manages the Digital Solutions Gallery program at the Ohio State University.
His work as a futurist and anthropologist position him as part Paul Revere, the one to sound the alarm, and part Arnold Toynbee/Edward Gibbon, the one who explains what has happened/what is happening.
Thornton has taught at four major universities, writes columns on technology for three leading publications, researches at four think tanks, advises major organizations and government agencies on how to think differently about technology, all the while conducting seminal anthropological field research into technology-use behaviours of the various tribes comprising modern society.
His recent book “The New Know: Innovation Powered by Analytics” examines the intersection of the analytic and executive tribes.
Next time…
Be on the lookout for our next episode, launching on Wednesday 22nd March 2023, where we will be talking to Denise Wiseman, Chief Community Manager and Founder, The PX Community. Denise has worked in the non-profit and for-profit healthcare sector and has spent the last decade in patient experience. Denise strives to and encourages other to think differently, create synergistic collaborations and, of course, make a ruckus. In Denise’s episode, you will hear how passionate she is about patient care and how that sits at the heart of her endeavour to end silos in throughout healthcare.
In the meantime
Missed an episode? Catch up on all previous episodes, and add the series to your Spotify and Apple Podcasts library here.
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