media cto pov

Jonathan Schwartz's Weblog: Better Honest Than Polite

"Media company CEO's without a CTO on their staff should prepare to be acquired or broken up - they are fighting the future rather than monetizing it."

i saw this post from sun's ceo, jonathan schwartz, because a cto friend of mine pointed to it - i don't subscribe to jonathan's blog because he's normally not that relevant to me, but i do subscribe to his cto, greg papadopoulos, who's a long time friend of mine...

the post is about how media industry ceo's tend to have their chief legal officer report to them but not their chief technology officer, which i'd tend to agree w/, especially in my direct experience and the many media cto's i've meet throughout my career...

that's not to say that media industry cto's do not interact w/ their ceo's , and again in my experience i've always been fortunate enough to work for ceo's who understood that technology was transforming their baseline businesses, they had tons of curiosity regarding current technology/product limitations, competitive landscape and emerging media technology potentials - all these are areas that i've tended to focus on in my numerous cto roles...

a couple of reasons why the lead legal person at media companies tend to report to the ceo are that a number of ceo's are lawyers by trade, it just seems to be the trend, we are seeing less operating experienced ceo's, probably because of the other reason, media companies have tended to be on the defensive of late, which involves a strategy of protecting assets from infringement, with lawyers who get heavily involved in the strategy of the company and then end up being natural successors when an operating experienced ceo looks to step down, or is asked to leave by the board...

so as jonathan suggests, media companies do need to change with the times, and giving cto's a seat at the senior management table will become very important, especially for those that abandon their defensive ways and look to embrace and adopt emerging trends - thus staying relevant and around...