Digital Leadership Must-Haves for 2025: A CDO's Picks
The way I've described this internally at NJIT is this: When I'm preparing something like an ERP, which is mission critical for us, I'm going with a company that has been around for quite a while, that has perhaps a couple of hundred customers in higher education and is fiscally stable — a company that seems innovative, but also seems like they're going to be around for a while.
Whereas I'll make a different type of risk assessment if I'm buying something like a mobile app to fill a gap or to add a nice little value incentive for our students, faculty, staff, or alums, but it's not mission critical. It might just be a fun way to say, "Hey, we saw this. It's new. It's novel. It's innovative." Given all that, I'll be a little bit more risk-friendly, going with the five-person startup. And at the end of the day, if they go out of business, they'll get acquired. The project just changes direction, and I'm not left unable to run my enterprise.
That said, balancing risk with innovation is so much more challenging now than it's ever been. It's almost like "back to the dot-com era" with all these companies starting up and we don't necessarily know where they're going. Just be careful out there in the clouds!
Grush: Your cloud "must-have" sounds like a cautionary tale.
Future/Unknown Readiness
Wozencroft: A perfect transition into my tenth and last "must-have"! It's up for interpretation, so readers are encouraged to ponder their own environment; to read in their own context. Our final "must-have" is: Prepare for the unknown. Future readiness is hard, because things are changing so rapidly.
You have to be ready to pivot and respond to emerging trends, whether they're opportunities or crises. But I believe this will be good for us. We know that there will be challenges ahead. So get out there as a digital leader. The agile CIO/CDO, and the agile university will be the ones to survive and emerge as true leaders in the market, unlike the ones who are sitting back and waiting.
[Editor's note: Image by AI. Microsoft Image Creator by Designer]
About the Author
Mary Grush is Editor and Conference Program Director, Campus Technology.