We here at CIO Talk Radio just finished up our first ever “New Year, New Book” Contest. We asked you to tell us your ideas for a show topic you’d like to see us cover for a chance to win one of three business and IT strategy books. Thanks to everyone for the thoughtful entries and making the contest a success!
You can read more about each of the three books here, but we thought we’d share some of the winners’ ideas that made us think, and you may see these topics appearing on our show soon.
Building Business Relationships
Congratulations to Stephen Avans, who won The CIO Playbook: Strategies and Best Practices for IT Leaders to Deliver Value, by Nicholas R. Colisto (2012) for his topic on building better business relationships. Avans said he would like someone to expand on the importance of building connections in business. As an IT professional himself, he’s looking for any tips for someone just starting out.
It may be expected that the knowledge that comes from connections is universal amongst all branches internally, but that may not always be true for IT people and the connections made within their department. As a CIO, what tips can you provide to fellow executives and IT people? How can you make sure that everyone is communicating and building connections not only with partners and competitors, but even internally? For new companies or large organizations, how do we make sure relationships are strong and information is mutual?
Business Intelligence in Higher Education
Michael Ambrosino asked, “How can schools, especially small ones, continue to carve out meaningful market share given the rising costs of delivering a quality education?” Congratulations to Ambrosino on winning Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant, by W. Chan Kim and Renee A. Mauborgne (2005).
It’s a good question, and one we’ve covered before to some extent on this show from June. Several forms of higher education are missing the mark in ways, but in using BI we may be able “to create meaningful educational programming and then accurately measure how well it performs.” Ambrosino also posed the questions, “What would be the series of indicators that would measure success? And how can education learn to become more nimble in such a fast changing marketplace?”
Gamification and Sales
Congratulations to Wilbert Williams on winning The Social Organization: How to use Social media to Tap the Collective Genius of your Customers and Employees, by Anthony J. Bradley and Mark P. McDonald (2011). Williams wants to know how gamification can be used to impact the modern sales force. Gamification is the idea of thinking in terms of a game, i.e. by awarding points or achievements to users, as a way of engaging users and solving problems.
So in theory, it can be used to improve ROI and data quality, but how can other businesses incorporate their ideas into their sales functions? How does it combine with Big Data? Can it help sales numbers?
Congratulations again to all of our winners! Sign up for our email list and “Like” CIO Talk Radio on Facebook for information on upcoming contests and special promotions.
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