The Practical Visionary For the chief information officer (CIO), thinking strategically has never been more important. New technologies are changing how companies relate to their employees, customers, suppliers, partners, sales channels, and markets. The CIO can earn a seat at the senior leadership table by helping to set and realize long-term goals and by augmenting the capabilities of the entire enterprise.

Uncaptured Fortunes in Intellectual Property Finding competitive values in corporate technologies and intellectual property can help drive top-line growth.

Travel 2.0 Winning over the travelers of the future will require technologies that, like human travel agents, can segment customers accurately and give them what they want.

Signals for the Coming Year Change may be certain, but for a business decision maker, some changes have more impact than others. Here are eight trends that will make the greatest difference in 2008.

Kevin George: Unilever’s Digital Media Strategy Unilever’s U.S. vice president and general manager of its deodorants division discusses his company’s approach to launching new products using a variety of new media channels.

Are Internet Companies Overvalued (Again)? What we can learn from eBay’s acquisition of Skype.

Technology and Its Discontents In this interview, historian David Edgerton maintains that we will not fully understand innovation unless we rethink the history of technology and its uses.

Web 2.0: Profiting from the Threat Fresh trends in consumer behavior driven by social media pose significant challenges to companies stuck in a traditional market-to-the-masses mind-set. Here’s how to thrive on the new Web.

Web-Based Apps: A Strategic View For years, CIOs have dreamed of a so-called thin-client computing environment, in which programs reside solely on servers and are doled out to slimmed-down workstations as the users need them. Only recently, however, has this dream begun to turn into reality.

The Google Enigma Should innovation-minded managers look at the fast-growing Internet company as a model — or an anomaly?

Kiss and Make Up Industrial manufacturers often have strained relationships with their IT organizations because manufacturers demand better IT support while simultaneously targeting IT for not cutting costs. Some companies have successfully emerged from this predicament using a lean, best practice model which we call “the 1 percent IT organization.” This means IT has a cost structure approaching 1 percent of revenue. An IT organization that can transform its operating model to act as both cost center and strategic enabler will be poised to manage both the cyclicality of the present and the growth needs of the future.

Knowledge Review: Chronicling the Future To understand what happened in Silicon Valley in the 1980s is to understand what one venture capitalist called “the greatest legal creation of wealth in the history of the world.” But it was a chaotic revolution, and its documentation is fragmented. Here is list of resources that will help uncover the mysteries of early Silicon Valley.

The Ignorance of Crowds With the early stages of the open source movement behind us, the limitations of the model have come into focus. Successful projects have been less egalitarian than many imagine, and open source has emerged more as a tool for refinement than a wellspring of innovation. Executives who understand this distinction will see the best results from the power of peer production.

The Coming Enterprise Software Shakeup The software industry is in the throes of a monumental shift. Widespread consolidation is leading to rising enterprise software prices, forcing software buyers to find new, lower-cost alternatives. But rising prices may also signal a new era of cooperation among software buyers, which could help shift the balance of power in their favor. CIOs who understand these changes can leverage their position to make smarter -- and cheaper -- purchases.

Why IT Integration is Critical to Merger Success Today, we find ourselves in the midst of yet another record-breaking wave of mergers. Yet, the lessons of the past have not been learned. Booz Allen Hamilton’s Tom Casey and Gerald Adolph write for CIO Insight that senior management continues to approach the integration of information technology functions in a perfunctory, arms-length manner. This both tempts fate and misses out on the very real benefits a well-planned and effectively executed IT integration can bring. Indeed, Booz Allen research shows that $2 of every $5 in merger synergy comes in some way from IT.

Future of the Enterprise Software Industry: Keys to Competitive Success In the highly competitive environment of enterprise software, catching the next technological wave was historically the way to win. Today, with no radically new technologies imminent and with most markets saturated, companies have fewer opportunities for growth. How should suppliers cope with this struggle, and what opportunities will it create for systems integrators and clients? To answer these questions, Booz Allen Hamilton interviewed Fortune 500 firms and analyzed the implications for the software industry.

Where to Start: Service Oriented Architecture Is a Reality, But How Should You Take Advantage of It? Over the last two decades, CIOs have found themselves locked in a vicious cycle. Maintenance takes a bigger bite out of IT budgets each year, which means less money is available for developmental upgrades. Without developmental upgrades, maintenance on outdated systems only masks larger problems. Now there is a way to end the cycle: Service oriented architecture offers a low-cost way to integrate, update, and manage new data, applications, and processes in current legacy systems.

The Majority of New Hires Are Found Online Social networking sites and advances in recruiting technologies are beginning to impact the way employees find jobs and employers fill openings. Last year, more than half of new hires at leading U.S. companies were sourced through the Internet, according to a study conducted by Booz Allen Hamilton on behalf of the DirectEmployers Association. As a consequence, employers say that the quality of hires is improving and that new technology is facilitating a higher return on recruiting investment.

Dueling Technologies at the Point of Sale Using a mobile phone to make payments is easier, faster, cheaper, and more secure than credit cards, checks, and even cash. So why are the United States and Europe so slow to adopt the technology?

Digital TV to Outpace Broadband Internet in Europe By 2010, DTV will replace broadband Internet as the principal driver of growth in Europe's digital economy. Consumers will look for providers that offer the "triple play" -- access to TV, Internet, and telephony. Regulatory agencies, meanwhile, will be the main catalysts -- or barriers -- to growth. A Booz Allen Hamilton report.

Making Mobile Payment Work for Everyone To understand why m-payments -- instant payments for goods and services via a handheld device -- face an uphill battle in Europe and the U.S., it’s instructive to understand why they’re taking off in Japan and Korea. The first step in building a successful m-payment system is cooperation among all the stakeholders.