3 keys to tech leadership in an AI-first world
Finalists for the MIT Sloan 2025 CIO Leadership Award recommend agentic AI, pervasive innovation, and an executive focus on strategy.
Faculty
George Westerman is a Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management and Founder of the Global Opportunity Forum.
George’s work bridges the fields of executive leadership and technology strategy. During more than 20 years with MIT Sloan School of Management, he has written three award-winning books, including Leading Digital: Turning Technology Into Business Transformation. As a pioneering researcher on digital transformation, George has published papers in Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, and other top journals. He is now focused on helping employers, educators, and other groups to rethink the process of workforce learning around the world through the GOI and several research collaborations.
George is cochair of the MIT Sloan CIO Leadership Awards, a member of the Digital Strategy Roundtable for the US Library of Congress, and learning strategy advisor to the World Health Organization Academy. He works frequently with senior management teams and industry groups around the world. Prior to earning a Doctorate from Harvard Business School, he gained more than 13 years of experience in product development and technology leadership roles.
Finalists for the MIT Sloan 2025 CIO Leadership Award recommend agentic AI, pervasive innovation, and an executive focus on strategy.
Colgate-Palmolive, Sanofi, and other firms are making generative AI work for them in ways both big and (intentionally) small.
"There has been a steady progression for years for CIOs to become more strategic leaders. There are a lot of IT leaders who don't get it yet, and they now have to become the strategy leader they should have been all along," said principal research scientist George Westerman. "The CIO needs a vision of what IT needs to be and the ability to execute," said principal research scientist Keri Pearlson.
"It can do things that traditional computing could not do. However, we still want to use the same processes to evaluate how to do it."
People mistakenly think they're strategic simply because they have a business goal, work toward a specific objective, or report to the CEO.
"Experiment on some tasks while making foundational investments in data and integration that will make larger transformations possible."
Explore the opportunities for your business with IoT, from demystifying and defining IoT to creating a roadmap for its real-world application. The program aims to help people envision and lead IoT-based transformations, not just understand the technical elements. The goal is to demystify IoT jargon so that managers can start to achieve the strategic advantage IoT makes possible.
The Advanced Management Program (AMP) is a month-long senior executive program designed for a diverse group of experienced leaders seeking transformative learning among global peers. AMP participants will engage in custom learning components led by MIT’s world-renowned faculty, including interactive classroom sessions, management simulations, case studies, 1:1 leadership coaching, and individualized feedback assessments. Participants will also explore the many companies, labs and centers that make MIT and surrounding Kendall Square the epicenter of innovation worldwide.