Top 13 Insights from the Gartner ITxpo/Symposium

OpenMarket – October 29, 2014

A few weeks ago I attended the Gartner ITxpo/Symposium in Orlando, FL. Gartner is one of the largest enterprise IT analyst firms in the world, and their Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2014 just might be the biggest enterprise IT conference in the U.S. It sold out with nearly 13,000 attendees. This is the first time that I’ve attended the event and it was quite impressive in many ways – quantity of senior level IT and line of business leaders, quality of speakers and their presentations, and of course, the big event that Gartner hosted at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, where the theme park workers greeted you like movie stars as you entered the park on a red carpet.

Conference Theme

The general theme of the show was around Digital Business (transformation, impact, etc.). Digital business is the creation of new business designs by blurring the digital and physical worlds. Digital business promises to usher in an unprecedented convergence of people, business, and things that disrupts existing business models. With more than seven billion people and businesses, and at least 35 billion devices, communicating, transacting, and even negotiating with each other, a new world comes into being: the world of digital business.

There were lots of ‘Top 10’ lists presented at the show and it’s clear that innovation is king in today’s ever-changing world. I took thirteen pages of notes at the conference, so thirteen insights seemed appropriate. See below for my top thirteen…

Top 13 Insights…

1. Rebalance Benefits Realization – planning, execution and measuring results. Should shift more effort to measuring results/benefits.
2. Culture eats strategy for breakfast
3. It’s not about WHO is right, it’s about WHAT is right
4. What are the strategic business priorities for your org over the next 2 years? #1 response was growth
5. What are the biggest factors constraining your top priorities? Talent/skills/labor constraints
6. Purpose of 21st century firm: To accelerate capability building and effectively apply that capability to innovation
7. Three necessary dimensions of success: attitude, focus & technology and business models
8. The future is uncertain, therefore scenario planning is critical
9. Thinking becomes more important than knowing / The ability to learn will be more important than skills
10. No one can predict the future, but we can be ready for it
11. Innovation is king
    1. Challenge the status quo – traditional incremental improvements by Business Process Management (BPM) is not good or bold enough going forward
    2. Change enable your organization – organizational liquidity
    3. Stop tinkering and start innovating with business processes
12. The death of ‘least privilege’ – unlimited access to non-critical assets
13. Bimodal IT
    1. Development – focused on speed
    2. Ops – focused on stability

If you attended this conference, please share with me your biggest insights or findings from the event.

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