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Buyer Personal Series

Market Trends: Chief Strategy Officer the “Strategy Orchestrator”

Dec 2015/in , , , /by

 This is part of the FirstRain Persona Series.

Many may not recognize the title, “Chief Strategy Officer,” as part of the C-Suite, as the role has recently become popular, but will recognize a CSO’s duties. People have come to know the CSO as the “enforcer”, or a “mini-CEO” because of their main focus: to implement the vision of the CEO and company.

No one likes to be the “tough guy”, but many companies have already recognized a need for a Chief Strategy Officer such as Deloitte, IBM, Citrix, Intuit, Cloudera, Oracle and Cisco. CSO’s are usually recruited from veteran roles in management where they have a proven track record of successfully leading teams. Often their titles are coupled with CTO, Head of Corporate Development, and VP of Strategic Alliances.

Today, the CSO works closely with the CEO and bears the challenge of rapidly implementing a strategy that will drive a company to meet end goals and objectives. They understand the importance of being able to influence and mentor people to meet industry demands.

So what does the chief strategy officer do? Some CSO’s act more like a strategist while others are “doers”, and others, facilitators, but regardless of their implementation style, they must effectively oversee the entire company’s strategic plan.

A top priority for a CSO is bringing cohesiveness across the company and making sure that everyone is on board with the company’s strategic goals. Not everyone is apt for change, but working together is necessary to effectively move a company forward. A lot of a CSO’s time is spent working closely with upper management to communicate clearly the next stages a company must make. Their message must be clear-cut and definitive to create an immediate response from these teams.

Setting concrete plans, and goals are necessary to meet long-term visions.  With a dynamic list of priorities, a CSO must be mindful of change. In today’s hyperactive digital business world, strategies must account for market changes. Successful CSO’s are not reacting to market trends and changes, they are preparing for them.

Acting pre-emptively to threats, competitors and all the other bumps on the road, will be key to the success of the office of the CSO. Today’s CSO must leverage business intelligence tools that are responsive to market trends and changes and, therefore, able to focus on facilitating strategy as the company’s “Strategy Orchestrator”.

For example in the financial industry, a CSO might be responsible for mitigating risk and growth opportunities. They must be aware of mergers and acquisitions, competitors, global economic changes and especially disrupting technologies in FinTech. This can be overwhelming and can deter a CSO away from enabling a strategic plan. Enterprise business intelligence platforms are fulfilling the need of identifying risk within markets. Companies like FirstRain identify market trends and provide their users with actionable insights to better prepare for market changes, competitors and opportunities.

FirstRain Screenshot

In Industrial Manufacturing, for example, a CEO’s plan might require rapid growth to stay afloat, and this will require a Chief Strategy Officer to work closely with Sales and Marketing to implement a strategy that will require sales teams to work more effectively. For a sales team to drive results, they must be supplied with technology that prioritizes clients and presents actionable insights for new opportunities that help fulfill the corporate strategy. CRM intelligence software helps prioritize tasks that meet short-term goals, mid-term goals, and successfully steers a company to growth.

Regardless of the industry, a Chief Strategy Officer plays a key role as a leader who understands the mechanics of getting things done. The role often demands the CSO to drive a company through market change, growth, or disruptions, but at end of the day, the CSO must be influential in facilitating change and bringing a vision to live.

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Coding is the New Literacy

Jun 2012/in , /by

Our world is surrounded by software. Every day teenagers spend more than 10 hours a day on line interfacing through a software layer – texting, facebook, tumblr, TV, movies – all are constructed in software and people use a software layer to interact. Even as a CEO, my day is dominated by software – Office apps, Twitter, Skype and even Words with Friends.

Software is changing our world in as profound a way as the book did starting in 1440. The book, following the invention of the printing press, democratized knowledge. Anyone who could read and write could share ideas and change the way other people thought. By 1500 there were 35,000 book titles in print and over 20MM books printed. 60 years after the invention of the computer the influence of software on our world is still growing exponentially.

And it touches everyone. Poor illiterate women in India running micro businesses through a cellphone. CEOs and bankers. Students at a Palo Alto High School. And so when I was invited to give a TEDx talk at Gunn High School two weeks ago I chose to talk about how being able to code – or at least understand enough structured logic to create software apps – is as important now as being able to read and write.

Technology is now where the jobs are, where the growth is, where the source of the major revolution of the next 100 years starts. It’s an exciting place to be and it’s a meritocracy. Everyone can learn it, just like everyone can learn to read and write.

Here’s my talk:

And the most exciting thing for me giving this talk was that at the end I was surrounded by teenage girls thrilled to have their interest in software and technology endorsed and confirmed by my talk.

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Software is King and the source of growth in 2011 Silicon Valley

Feb 2011/in /by

Every recession, every major generation of the Valley, naysayers come out and say the good days are over – but Silicon Valley continues to reinvent itself.

The latest herald of doom is Scott McNealy, former CEO of Sun. In a Business Insider interview Scott claims that Silicon Valley’s emerging sectors, like social networking and “green” technology, will not make up for jobs lost due to the software and computer industry consolidation. But with big names like Google, Microsoft, and Facebook planning for expansion, I wouldn’t be so quick to assume it’s all over.

Claiming that every new transition creates less job opportunity than before, Scott lacks confidence in the future potential of contemporary partnerships to flourish. But he’s wrong. Not only is it anticipated that social networking industries will more than make up for lost jobs, but we are likely to see unprecedented growth in the consolidation of software and hardware companies. The technology sector never fails to impress me with new innovation and change, and this “recession” is no exception.

Even Obama sees it (although maybe he is here fund raising at the same time). He says that our tech companies are the heirs to the industries that made the United States the worlds biggest economy. He is in the Bay Area today to discuss job creation and innovation around the Silicon Valley with executives like Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Eric Schmidt, and many more.

Maybe the irony is stinging. Facebook announced last week that it will in fact move its corporate headquarters to Sun’s old facility in Menlo Park (Sun having been swallowed by the Oracle whale). This is Facebook’s second move in the last two years and they have now leased a 1-million-square-foot campus. Google has announced a big addition as well, introducing a new campus in San Francisco to help alleviate long commutes. Google has also experienced a record 75,000 job applications over the last week, and they expect to grow more than 30,000 employees by 2012 (Dow Jones).

It is software technology that is driving this growth. Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, claims that more than 300,000 Android devices are being activated everyday, requiring more engineers and sales people to keep up with the high demand. “This will be our biggest hiring year ever,” said Jordan Newman (a Google company spokesman). Note — FirstRain is currently hiring in California and India.

Growth Industries:

Sadly I think Nokia is trying to get back to growth by partnering with Microsoft for their phone OS but my personal opinion is they just killed what was once a great phone provider. Microsoft may gain – they are trying to make the new Windows Phone 7 a success – and they are hooking up with Nokia’s strong hardware but I doubt the combination will compete. But they are not the only ones focusing on Valley software innovation. Their old competitor, Sony Ericsson, is shifting resources from its headquarters in Sweden to Silicon Valley in order to keep up with the shifting increase from hardware to software demands in the mobile phone industry.


I think Scott is just plain wrong, or certainly colored by his predominantly hardware background. He believes that Silicon Valley is “not the best place in the world to start a company,” but the evidence in the software world is to the contrary. Maybe it’s just his personal preference, but as Senator Mark Warner of Virginia correctly claims, the Internet and social networking have been “one of the rare areas of growth in the U.S. economy” in a decade that didn’t spur much innovation.

As for “green” technology not being able to make up for lost jobs that is certainly true in the short term, as it typically takes a full generation for a new industry to take effect. However, the key to the Silicon Valley economy is now software innovation, and we’re excited to be a part of it.

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