Today, the combination of powerful consumer technologies and Marketing-IT co-evolution presents business leaders with a major opportunity to expand their areas of expertise and fully participate in some of the most exciting and rapidly growing segments of the IT industry. Perhaps only smart products and the internet of things rival marketing technology in terms of potential business and societal impact.

I have had the great opportunity to spend the past two months interviewing many of the top CIOs and CMOs in the world. The purpose of each interview was to develop a cross-perception analysis of how each felt about the other's organization as related to marketing technology initiatives. In essence, to what extent is marketing poaching the sexy stuff from IT and setting up their own technology organization? While very cordial about their personal feelings about their respective 'C-peer', an organizational anxiety clearly exists. This raises some interesting questions about the pace of co-evolution of marketing and IT as marketing deliverables become almost entirely technology driven.

Over the last twenty years, information technology – especially the internet – has dramatically increased the amount, accessibility and velocity of digital information. This is causing huge changes in how almost every company is organized and run. In a new LEF position paper, David Moschella and I examine one particularly important change: the growing pressure on companies to share more information and data about their business.  We show how some companies are harnessing the power of transparency to become more productive and successful, to innovate more quickly, and to build trust among their customers, partners and investors.

Over the last several months, I have been working on a project  on how to create a transparency strategy for your organization.  The report is due to be published in a few weeks’ time.  The report explores the pressures that are forcing companies and governments to become more transparent – whether they want to be or not – and examines the benefits of sharing more information in eight different areas, ranging from personnel data to product plans to customer data.  It also shows how developing an effective transparency strategy can help your organization overcome some of the barriers to information sharing – both inside and outside your firm.