Almost everyone agrees that anyone who seeks to lead must get firsthand experience. Experience, however, by itself doesn't guarantee learning. What matters most is what one makes of experience, particularly traumatic and often unplanned crucible events that challenge one as a leader. This conclusion comes from research done by Robert Thomas, who is executive director at Accenture's Institute of High Performance Business Leadership and as an associate professor at Tuft University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. The empirical research down by the Institute provides Accenture's consultants and clients with insight on topics ranging from new business global to talent management. Most of the information analyzed in Thomas's new book, Crucibles of Leadership: How to Learn from Experience to Become a Great Leader, comes from interviews with leaders selected on the basis of their proven ability to grow and to sustain an organization during times of trial. In this podcast, Thomas talks about what some CEOs have learned from their crucibles, how even CIOs can leverage their crucibles to move up the ranks, and how C-level executives can help emerging leaders learn from their experiences.

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Innovation can deliver a desirable experience for your customers, and sustainable growth for your company. Many companies, however, struggle with how to deliver top-line growth and deliver true business innovation. Meanwhile, come companies have become astounded by the curve balls being thrown at them because of rising energy costs in the global economy. Getting corporate innovation right goes beyond delivering the next generation product. If you want to deliver something that creates value Innovation can deliver a desirable experience for customers, you need to take a holistic look at innovation. This approach requires a total solution based on the right business model, the ability to leverage partnership relationships, and the desire to reach customers through different channels. Cheryl Perkins practiced this holistic innovation model while she was chief innovation officer for Kimberly-Clark. This model has become the underpinning of her strategic innovation consulting practice called Innovationedge. She says, "We started the practice to deliver a roadmap so companies can get their leadership teams focused on key priorities and capabilities so they can start to innovate." Because so many products have a tie in some way to IT, CIOs plays a critical role in driving innovation more than they did a few years ago. Perkins says that CIO and their teams can harness the important discrete pieces of information that sit in various departments across the company. She adds that even regulated products have discrete information residing in different departments. She says, "The IT team puts critical support systems and information systems in place so you can capture the knowledge and transfer it. This process is critical to speed to market. If you don't have this flow of information and data throughout the corporation, your time to market will be delayed. Without the IT team, the data and knowledge can't be transformed into new solutions."

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Many CIOs grapple with how to align IT with the needs of their businesses. By de facto, they have to demonstrate the value their role serves and to make sure technology works well within their businesses. However, these CIOs aren't alone. Businesses, in general, have a hard time measuring and quantifying the value of IT and how it affects the entire business. Meanwhile, forces such as a mobile global workforce, the growing dependency on social media, and the push for more utility computing based on service-oriented architecture are driving businesses to converge their IT strategy with their business strategy. This move will fuel growth and will sustain profitability. In a converged company, information, not the technology behind it, is what matters to all constituents the company serves. As a result, CIOs take on the new role of information officer not chief IT officer. They become more involve in strategy planning and in the governance process. Moreover, they look at how technology enables the business architecture and how the business manages the overall investment portfolio. No one knows more about getting out of the alignment trap and moving toward convergence than Faisal Hoque, founder and CEO of BTM Corporation; founder of the BTM Institute, a not-for-profit IT think tank; and author of five books on business technology management. In fact, a decade ago, Hoque conceived and developed a unique holistic business model which looks at the relationship between business and technology in the following areas: governance, strategy and platform, enterprise architecture, investment management, and the maturity of the overall management structure. The result is a converged organization where business and technology come together to drive innovation, which, in turn, fuels growth and profitability. In this podcast, Hoque provides a good overview of the organizational changes and the philosophy changes CIOs need to consider if they want to transition from alignment to convergence. He also talks about the BTM Institute's Business Technology Convergence Index, a five-year study that quantifies the relationship between the way global companies value their technology investments and the companies' revenues and profitability. He says, "Companies with mature converged business technology management practices, such as FedEx, UPS, and Procter & Gamble, have better financial performance than their competitors. Think about it. Today, both FedEx and UPS are information services companies, not just movers or packages and trucks."

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Each year, MasterCard processes more than a trillion dollars worth of credit card transactions between its 25 million acceptance locations in 210 countries worldwide. Net revenues for 2007 year were $4.1 billion, a 22 percent increase versus the same period in 2006. Information technology drives all MasterCard's three card business services: franchiser of acceptance locations that are guaranteed through MasterCard's network; processor of all payment transactions through the network and the final settlement of dollars with the financial institutions; and consultant offering a data warehouse of intelligence to help customers, such as merchants and banks, to make the best use of payments. Robert Reeg, interim president of global technology and operations at MasterCard Worldwide, says that he doesn't worry about aligning IT with the business. He says, "We're one and the same. IT and the business are completely connected." In fact, Reeg leverages IT talent around the world to build and to manage MasterCard's massive network. He has even created the role of the business technologist as a way to develop future IT leaders. In this podcast, Reeg talks about how his organization has adapted to the current economy to maintain its position in the marketplace, what processes, best practices, and new technologies are in place to manage a global organization, what role outsourcing plays in the IT operations, and how leveraging diversity can improve the innovation process.

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In 2007, a major company issued a statement saying that it had dismissed its CIO for violating an important corporate policy. The nature of the corporate policy wasn't revealed. Just about every IT publication carried news of the event. For weeks IT bloggers posted comments about what the CIO could have done to be let go. Eventually, the noise level around this executive's dismissal died down, and the executive took a new job in an area outside of IT. In this podcast, enterpriseleadership.org asked one of the world's most sought-after authorities on executive reputation, to talk about how C-level executives, especially CEOs, build their reputations based on their corporate strategies, what they need to do to maintain them, and what challenges they face in developing and executing their corporate strategies. In her role as chief reputation strategist, Dr. Leslie Gaines-Ross leads Weber Shandwick?s global reputation consulting services and proprietary thought-leadership development. She has done groundbreaking, award-winning research into CEO and corporate reputation, executive team reputation, leadership transitions, and reputation sustainability and recovery. She spearheaded the first comprehensive research on CEO reputation and its impact on corporate reputation and performance. She developed Weber Shandwick?s first global corporate reputation study ? ?Safeguarding Reputation,? which identifies strategies for sustaining and recovering corporate reputation. Dr. Gaines-Ross also created Fortune?s ?On the Minds of CEOs? research. Her book, CEO Capital: A Guide to Building CEO Reputation and Company Success, was published in 2003 by John Wiley & Sons and her book on reputation recovery is scheduled to be published in 2008, also by John Wiley & Sons. Dr. Gaines-Ross created www.reputationRx.com, the Web site devoted exclusively to reputation news and information, and her blog can be found at http://reputationxchange.com/.

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Because of the rapidly accelerating pace of change in global business today, C-level executives in all size companies need to respond quickly to changes in their business climate. Thus, executives have to be aware, not only of their own external environment, but also they have to immerse themselves in their industries, and to look at society -- both nationally and globally. By understanding where changes come from or what changes to make, executives can take advantage of new opportunities. Meanwhile, executives must also focus on innovation and entrepreneurship in order to be successful. In fact, the Carnegie Mellon MBA programs looks at innovation in organizations, ranging from startups to the Fortune 500 companies. In this podcast, Dr. Art Boni, the director of the Donald H. Jones Center for Entrepreneurship at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University, talks about how entrepreneurial leadership and innovative drive corporate growth. (Boni also holds the John R. Thorne Chair of Entrepreneurship at the Tepper School of Business.) He says that to achieve this, executives need to understand their market, and their customer needs, and then to develop strategies for going forward. He says, "Companies also need to have good leadership because a strategy without a good team to execute it won't go very far." Boni views corporate strategy as an integral part of innovation and success for any organization. He adds that good integration of information across the enterprise can help executives better execute their strategies and move the company forward. Dr. Boni has solid experience to back up what he teaches and preaches. Before getting his doctorate and becoming a full-time professor, Boni pursued an entrepreneurial career in the private sector. He joined Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) after its startup period and become part of the senior management team that built the company to $700 million in revenues. Today, SAIC is an $8 billion technology conglomerate. He also founded and served as CEO of a technology incubator, and four companies in technology and life sciences.

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When Hord Tipton became CIO of the U.S. Dept. of Interior, he knew he would be wrestling with some daunting IT issues, especially in security. In fact, the Dept. was reeling from a December 2001 court order that disconnected all Interior systems from the Internet. That order resulted in a multi-million lawsuit brought by beneficiaries of Individual Indian Trust accounts held by the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs, based in part on hackers burrowing into the Trust's accounts. By making a good case for business systems security, Tipton managed to convince the Interior's officials to increase the $4 million annual IT network and security budget to $100 million. Tipton and his staff spent the next four years upgrading systems security and getting all of the Interior's systems reconnected to the Internet. Tipton even gave his IT staff one year to become certified in security. When he received a lot of staff resistance to his challenge, the 60-year old Tipton did something unusual for a CIO. He became a Certified Information Systems Security Professional. This certification matched the job at hand. Under Tipton's leadership, the U.S. Dept. of the Interior established sound IT security policies and guidelines, and initiated testing and IT security training programs throughout the agency. Now retired from government service, Tipton is a board member of ISC2,, the organization that oversees the CISSP exam and maintains the credentialing process.

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Today's CIOs come from many disciplines outside of IT, but they all face a similar challenge -- how to take their IT organization from being a cost-centric services provider to being perceived as a valuable business partner. That's the question Patrick Gray answers in his new book, Breakthrough IT: Supercharging Organizational Value Through Technology. His book provides a necessary roadmap for shifting IT from an operational entity that simply manages technology, to a powerhouse that combines strategy and technology to deliver measurable business results and long-term value. As principal and president of the Prevoyance Group, a strategic IT consulting firm, Gray has worked on this issue with clients ranging from OfficeMax to SAP. The Prevoyance Group's strategic IT consulting combines applied strategy and process improvement to ensure large IT organizations measurable monetary returns. In this podcast, Patrick Gray talks about why CIOs don't belong to the business strategy circle, how the CIO role has to change to accommodate breakthrough IT, and what CIOs should do to accelerate that change.

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To provide end-to-end IT services and business processing outsourcing solutions for Global 2000 companies, UST Global has a customer-centric global engagement model that combines local and off-sites resources with the cost, scale, and quality advantages of off-shore operations. This customer-centric model forms the core of the company's values of how it operates and how it serves customers. Tony Velleca, UST Global's CIO says that the company strives to build a long-lasting strategic relationship with each customer. "We empower our employees to provide value beyond what's outlined in a customer contract." A project portfolio management system provides the technology underpinning for the customer engagement model. Velleca says, "We can have as many as 660 projects going at the same time." The system Velleca deployed enables UST Global's personnel to prioritize company projects, and to improve the performance of those projects, while reducing their costs. He says, "Because we know which projects won't meet customers' objectives, we can take the approprate action." The industry-leading expertise found within UST Global's centers of excellence concept plays another key role in the customer engagement process. The CoEs deliver pragmatic IT solutions that allow UST Global to consistently achieve its most critical business objectives. Complementing the CoEs, the partner programs aim to develop strategic relationships with key technology organizations, which can provide UST developers with access to new technology and educational resources. KPMG has certified UST Global as an SEI-CMMI and PCMM Level 5 company. Velleca says, "We've adopted Six Sigma for developing our customer-facing processes. Our centers in India are ISO 27001 certified. These quality practices provide a foundation for all of our services, and also to provide internal benefits to our customers."

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To overcome stagnant revenues, Symantec embarked on a corporate transformation integrating disconnected business subsidiaries into one cohesive business, focused on customer needs. Symantec couldn't have done this initiative without the help of Dr. Robert H. Miles, who developed the accelerate corporate transformation or ACT framework to enable change. He has written many books on the subject and heads up a corporate transformation consulting practice and serves as chairman of two other consulting firms that use his ACT framework. Dr. Miles developed the ACT framework for business transformation while he was carrying out executive leadership programs for CEOs at Harvard Business School. The first version of ACT emphasized focus and execution. After spending time in Silicon Valley, Dr. Miles expanded the ACT framework to include speed and engagement. He says, "These four competencies become the bedrock of an organization's management process." In this podcast, Dr. Miles talks how the ACT framework can help C-level executives to plan, to launch, and to refocus corporate transformation efforts, how companies have benefited from this framework, and why speed, not necessarily agility, is the new management discipline.

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When it comes to looking for a job, an apartment, or even a good garage sale, more than 26 million unique visitors each month turn to a Craigslist.com site in one of 450 cities in 50 countries. No one can dispute the cult-like reputation Craigslist, founded by Craig Newmark, has earned. As a company, Craigslist runs frugal with 25 employees working out of an old Victorian building in San Francisco. However, Craigslist has proven that even a well meaning, grassroots bunch of nerds can put a big dent in the advertising profits earmarked for 1,000 of newspapers. Let's not forget how Craigslist, which is 25 percent owned by eBay, has changed the way many of us live and work. So how did Craigslist, which started as Newsmark's idea for a San Francisco events list 12 years, come this far? Why would a company that could be making hundreds of millions of dollars each year continue to offer a primarily free service? What drives Craigslist's quirky form of innovation and culture? These are some of the things enterpriseleadership.org asked Jim Buckmaster, craigslist CEO. Since 2000, Buckmaster has led craigslist to be the most used classifieds in any medium, and one of the world's most popular Web site.

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Server virtualization. Retiring and redeploying servers. Improved cooling. Virtualized desktops. Even temporary storage of the OS. These initiatives comprise Sybase's enterprise green strategy. Like many large companies, this $1 billion data base vendor has cut unnecessary IT costs by consolidating data centers. Now Sybase plans to keep unnecessary IT costs from growing by going green. In fact, Jim Swartz, CIO of Sybase, says that these initiatives could postpone the building of a new data center until 2017. How let's hear more about Sybase's going green from Jim Swartz, CIO and vice president of Sybase.

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What does agility have to do with information technology? If IT organizations want to lower their operating costs, to improve the business's overall customer service, and to find new revenues opportunities, they must improve their agility to anticipate changes in the marketplace, and to act accordingly. Agility, along with appropriate alignment with the business units, can help IT organizations create more business value. In this podcast, Dr. Nick Horney, founder and principal of Agility Consulting and Training, talks about the agile IT organization. He was one of the expert panelists who participated in the selection of CIO magazine's Agile 100. Now let's meet Dr. Nick Horney. http://www.enterpriseleadership.org

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Today, can you fly to any major city and find high quality, fully staff office space for a day or a month. You can open an office in New York without buying one piece of furniture or signing on with an Internet provider. Enter the instant office by Regus. This global company provides fully staffed, contractual office space, virtual offices, and meeting space in 400 cities in 70 countries. In this podcast, Mark Dixon, the founder and CEO of The Regus Group, talks about how he has combined innovative thinking, strong leadership, and cutting-edge technology to grow his business. Let's welcome Mark Dixon to the enterpriseleadership.org show.

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When it came to outsourcing requirements based on emerging technologies, such as Web services, Achievo decided to base its IT services delivery model on talent from China, instead of India. In this podcast, Bud Mathaisel, chief information officer and senior vice president of Achievo, talks about what differentiates his company's business model from other outsourcers and what has propelled the growth of IT outsourcing in China. Now let's listen to what Bud Mathaisel, CIO of Achievo, has to say. http://www.enterpriseleadership.orgChina, outsourcing, CMMI

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There's an old saying in IT. Business executives get the IT they deserve. Perhaps, this happens because a gap exists between how CIOs communicate the value of IT to business executives. Before they can bridge this gap, CIOs need to first understand where they rank on the Business IT Maturity model, and how they can create a construct they describes the next generation enterprise. It's one with an appetite for innovation and growth, and a desire to help the entire organization become more agile and collaborative. In this podcast, Vaughan Merlyn, executive vice president of BSG Concours, provides a colorful explanation of this model. Now let's meet Vaughan Merlyn. HOST Tom Parish. Produced at Tom Parish Inc. in Austin TX.

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PepsiCo. Seagram. Reebok. Eli Lilly. During his 40-year career in IT, Tom Trainer has been provided IT leadership for some of the world's most recognizable companies. He's seen IT evolve from the back office, to the cornerstone of the modern global corporation. In this podcast, Tom Trainer gives his observations about governance, IT alignment, innovation, and quality practices. So, join us for a conversation with Tom Trainer, the former CIO and senior vice president at PepsiCo.

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Are you one of those organizations with just too many powerful X86 servers? Then server virtualization might be just what you need. It enables you to consolidate these servers into fewer devices, as well as to reduce power consumption, and to eliminate the need to build a new data center. In this podcast, Simon Crosby, the chief technology officer at Citrix XenSource, provides some helpful guidelines for deploying server virtualization. Now let's join Simon Crosby, CTO of Citrix's Virtualization and Management Division.

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These are the best or times and the worst of times for CIOs. On the one hand, the CIO role has gone from keeping the lights on and the data flowing, to aligning IT with their company's business strategy. For those all those CIOs who aren't "born leaders," Dr. Ellen Kitzis, a group vice president for Gartner's CIO Executive Programs has done extensive research about how the CIO is changing and how the CIO should perform in their organization. New CIOs and seasoned CIOs who are reexamining their role will want to check out her Book, The New CIO Leader -- Setting the Agenda and Delivering Results, published by Harvard Business School Press, and thos podcast, as she talks about what it takes to become the new CIO leader.

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Those companies that get IT alignment right experience significantly larger business growth than their peers. They also see their IT costs go down. On the hand, many companies fall prey to the IT alignment trap by over aligning and, in turn, introducing more complexity into the organization. These are the findings of a study done by C.R. (Rudy) Puryear and his colleagues at Bain & Co.

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When it comes to deploying Six Sigma initiatives, IT organizations and IT service companies face a lot of challenges. The Juran Institute, a quality managing consulting firm founded by J.M. Juran, has been helping Fortune 1000 organizations to carry out Six Sigma successfully, especially in IT. In this podcast, Joe De Feo, CEO and executive coach for the Juran Institute, will talk about how Six Sigma applies to IT, and how organizations can correct the common mistakes they make in carrying out Six Sigma. He'll also dispel the myth that Six Sigma stops innovation.

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China. India, Brazil. Because the U.S. is no longer the sole player in IT innovation, companies such as IBM have had to devise new models for reaching start-up ventures around the world. Formed in 2000, the IBM Venture Group doesn't offer an investment pool of funds. Instead, the group works with more than 150 venture capital firms around the world to identify start-ups that might be candidates for non-equity relationships with IBM. Drew Clark, the co-founder, and director of strategy for the group, says, "We leverage the investments VCs make in these companies by working as a partner throughout their lifecycle." In this podcast, Clark tells how any CIO can replicate the group's model for innovation. It can start with what Clark calls the "open innovation jam," or "jamming," a process that encourages people outside of research and development and the corporate staff to contribute ideas for new processes. But regardless of their business, says Clark, "CIOs ... shouldn't limit themselves to one model for innovation."

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For the past 25 years, Jenny Craig, Inc., has become more of the U.S.'s leading health-conscious weight management program. Each week, more than 120,000 people follow the Jenny Craig program through the company's more than 500 Jenny Craig's center. Jenny Craig, Inc., which was purchased in July 2006 by Nestle for $600 million, is on a mission to do what it takes to keep its competitive edge. This move has included updating technology that enables Jenny Craig to offer a responsive relationship management program throughout customers' weight loss lifecycle. For example, features like click-to-call on the Jenny Craig Web site allow customers to enter their zip code and automatically receive a telephone call from the nearest Jenny Craig weight management center. Shourky Tiab, Jenny Craig's CIO, says, "Features like this help us to get close to our customers." Tiab, who joined the company in early 2007, is currently working on a back-office application that would sit on top of the new wide area network, which will connect all of more than 500 Jenny Craig weight management centers. Tiab says, "This application will give us a complete view of each customer, regardless of what channel he/she uses to communicate with us. It will help us to make our supply chain more efficient." In this podcast, Shoukry Tiab, chief information officer at Jenny Craig, talks about how the company perceives it customers and how technology is applied to serve their unique needs.

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Has anyone offered you an Altoid lately? Ever chew Wrigley's Doublemint gum when you were a kid? These are just two of the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company's enduring brands. In 2001, the 116-year old company decided to expand and update the global image and reputation of the Wrigley brand. This move included replacing an aging, disparate IT infrastructure with a single supply chain platform using SAP. Donagh Herlihy, Wrigley's CIO, spearheaded the three-year, international implementation, and helped shape the governance process needed to carry out the initiative. Now, IT?s helping to increase brand awareness for Wrigley in innovative ways, even helping Wrigley to reach out to young customers with a presence in Second Life and a safe, family-fun Web site where kids can indulge in multi-player games. http://www.enterpriseleadership.org

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In 2003, Michael Paravicini became the new chief technology information officer at Zurich Financial Services, one of the world's largest insurance companies. Right away, he knew he had his work cut out for him. First order of business: how to transform a highly decentralized, locally based staff of 7,700 IT professionals, including 30 CIOs, and several data centers. Paravicini says that although it was a tough road, he met the challenge, reducing costs by 30 percent through careful oursourcing choices and best practices including IT Infrastructure Library.

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Why do half of all IT projects fail? Why do most companies create major IT plans that have no linkages to corporate strategy? Can IT really be run as a business? Faisal Hoque, author of IT management books inclucing The Alignment Effect, and Sustained Innovation, and founder of BTM Corporation, has spent years researching questions like this. In this podcast, he talks about some of the conclusions he's drawn, and about the "holistic business model" for managing technology and business together that have helped global companies like Marriott and JPMorgan achieve a competitive edge.

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Patricia Morrison has a stellar track record delivering the value major corporations expect from the IT organization. In less than two years, she?s taken the $42 billion Motorola Corp. from #42 to #12 on InformationWeek's ranking of Top 500 IT innovators in 2006, and #1 in the manufacturing industry segment. She has one consistent message for her team of 2,200 Motorola IT professionals: "Make sure we deliver what we commit to." In his podcast, Patricia Morrison, executive vice president and chief information officer at Motorola, talks about everything from corporate governance to business process improvements to IT career development through rotational programs.

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Ever received a courtesy call from DirecTV or have subscribed to an AARP service over the telephone? Then you've probably spoken with one of the 14,000 customer care representatives from PRC LLC, formerly called Precision Response Corp. PRC is the country's third largest contact center outsourcer, which manages customer relationship for some of the world's leading corporations. PRC aims to deliver value for both its B to B and B to C customers. And, IT provides the crucial underpinning for driving the contact center services. In this podcast, CIO and CTO Umesh Jain talks about how a large enterprise can gain a deeper understanding of its customers' behavior by harnessing the contact center's vast amounts of customer and market data.

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Lt. General Harry Raduege had spent a professional lifetime working in technology for the military -- the last spent as director of the Defense Information Systems Agency. Then came 9/11. The lessons he learned about the importance of "netcentricity" got up-close and personal on that day and after, as he led efforts to prioritize and restore telecommunications throughout New York City and the Pentagon. Now, as chairman of the new Deloitte Center for Network Innovation, Raduege brings deep understanding of today's increasing need for interdependent information networks that are secure and interoperable, whether in the public or private sectors.

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In managing today's ever-more-complex data environment, the common complaint is about data silos that are out of control. Enter Master Data Management (MDM), a way to integrate all those disparate silos of data without having to replatform your system. MDM could help your enterprise with issues that arise from compliance requirements, M&A support, and CRM support. It might also be a great way to move incrementally toward a service oriented architecture. Jill Dyché and Evan Levy are the authors of the new book, Customer Data Integration: Reaching a Single Version of the Truth; they're also consultants with Basline Consulting, which specializes in MDM. In this interview, they'll talk about how MDM can be a segue for SOA, when to know if an MDM initiative makes sense for your business, some of the do's and don'ts you should know about implementing such an initiative, and more. http://www.EnterpriseLeadership.org

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Being a new CIO in a new company has it challenges, and its rewards. Just ask Vin Melvin, who become vice president and CIO of Arrow Electronics in 2006. The $14 billion provider of electronic components and computer products had grown rapidly through global acquisitions. But as a result, Arrow's supply chain became highly fragmented, and other key issues emerged, like the need to improve IT governance, and to adopt formal best practices to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley. Functions like driving innovation and IT governance remain works in progress, but compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley propelled Arrow to adopt formal best practices like the IT Infrastructure Library, or ITIL. Says Melvin, "ITIL has brought a process discipline to the IT community which has made compliance less burdensome to both the auditors and IT."

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Acxiom Corp. has quietly built a $1.5 billion business aggregating and managing more than 20 billion customer and prospect records for more than 1,000 global companies. An innovative culture has garnered numerous awards for this 38-year-old company; for example, it brought grid technology into the mainstream by developing the Customer Information Infrastructure (CII), and it did away with formal titles (like CIO) in 1992. Kevin Zaffaroni, Acxiom's IT organization leader, says, "We continued to enhance this culture of innovation. That's one of the reasons why the world's largest companies come to Conway, Arkansas, to have us do their work."

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Remember the Jules Vern classic, Around the World in Eighty Days? Now, get ready for "around the global economy in one day" ... any random day. That's the structure through which author and journalist Daniel Altman has woven a series of insightful and thought-provoking snapshots of the global economy in his new book, Connected: 24 Hours in the Global Economy. Reading Altman's book will put to rest any doubts you've ever had that the sovreign destiny of nations is increasingly like an incredibly complex web comprising wealth, politics, and culture. Join us for a wide-ranging conversation with this respected global writer that may leave you with a much better appreciation for the old phrase, "it's a small world," and its significant implications. http://www.enterpriseleadership.org

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As CTO of Indian behemoth Tata Consultancy Services, K. Ananth Krishnan has relied heavily on the work of Dr. Clayton Christensen, a Harvard Business School professor and author of The Innovator's Dilemma and The Innovator's Solution to help drive innovation. In May 2007, Krishnan received an InfoWorld Top 25 CTO award for two far-reaching initiatives: One was Ultimatrix, an intranet and transaction platform that digitized and integrated all of the company's end-to-end information, ranging from human resources to sales. The other was Project Infinity, a multiprotocol label switching backbone to tie together all of the companies Internet-based communications, such as telephony and network access, and video collaboration applications. In this podcast, Krishnan talks about the wisdom he's gotten from Dr. Christensen, the role of a corporate think tank, an overview of TCS's service computing framework, and the best practices the company uses to carry out technology initiatives.

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