C-suite Series: The 2021 CEO Study

Find youressential
How to thrive in a
post-pandemic reality

The IBM Institute for Business Value, in cooperation
with Oxford Economics, interviewed 3,000 CEOs fromnearly 50 countries and 26 industries. These interviews
were conducted virtually. In addition, through live videoconferencing and phone interviews, and when safe,
in-person meetings, the IBV conducted deep-dive
conversations with two dozen select CEOs from 11
industries and 11 countries.

Contents

2

Introduction

6

Chapter 1
Essential priorities
Perform with purposeful agility, make tech matter
more, and embrace emerging regulations

14 Chapter 2
Essential advantages
Five factors that set Outperformers apart
28 Chapter 3
Essential lessons
Define next-level competitive advantage
around customers, products, and operations
46 Action guide
Essential truths
50 Research and analysis methodology

2Introduction

This is a moment to take stock in an entirely new way. Whether
COVID-19 impacts subside from here or persist, 2020 served
as a dramatic inflection point. Never before has the entire
planet reconfigured its behavior simultaneously, participatingin lockdowns, quarantines, and enforced social distancing.
For businesses and governments, the implications havebeen extreme, with assumptions and plans radically altered.
From Asia to the Americas, the status quo has evaporated
both within and across industries. The future is murkier thanever—yet presents both new opportunities and new risks.
To better understand this singular moment, the IBM Institutefor Business Value (IBV) launched its most extensive Chief
Executive Officer (CEO) research project ever. Building on
almost 20 years of C-suite studies, the IBV gathered insightsfrom more than 3,000 CEOs and the most senior public sector
leaders across the economy and around the world, supplementing its own deep expertise with that of Oxford Economics,
a leader in global forecasting and quantitative analysis. In
addition, IBV hand-selected two dozen CEOs for extensive,
exclusive interviews that delve into the mindsets, themes,
and challenges that top leaders are grappling with right now.
What we’ve learned is extraordinary. We discovered
eye-opening surprises that reflect just how unprecedented
the next era will be, with new priorities and new areas offocus. From emerging expectations around remote work toaccelerated technological adoption, the leading practices ofyesterday and requirements of tomorrow are far from aligned.

Introduction | 3“COVID-19 has changed how we look at the future,” says CEO
Fernando González of CEMEX, a global leader in the building
materials industry. “We started questioning and challenging
everything. The traditional ways of planning are outdated. We
sense every hour, every day, every week, and react to it.” As
CEO and President Mark Little of Suncor, Canada’s largest
energy company, puts it, echoing nearly every CEO weinterviewed, “We’ll never go back.”
The central, overarching question of this new era: what will
it take to be essential—to customers, employees, community,
and investors? The CEOs we spoke with almost uniformly
emphasized that focusing on the sharpest edge of theirbusinesses, what differentiates their organizations and delivers
the most value, has become the overarching imperative.
Out of the chaos has come clarity: get rid of diversions andindulgences, root out “tradition for tradition’s sake,” and exploit
distinctive advantages. This applies externally, in products andservices, as well as internally. Who is essential to your organization, and what is essential to the operation of your business?
While many of our findings were indeed extraordinary, we also
discovered that a retrenchment—focusing on the basics—may
be equally as important as we move beyond the COVID
disruption into whatever comes next.

“Strip away distractions, andthen invest all of your energy,
your resources, to only the things
that are going to make you themost successful.”
Jeff McElfresh, CEO, AT&T Communications“We must have the courage and conviction to focus on a handfulof priorities,” says CEO Jeff McElfresh of AT&T Communications,which serves more than 130 million US customers and nearly
all of the Fortune 1,000. “We can no longer juggle a hundred
plates. Strip away distractions, and then invest all of yourenergy, your resources, to only the things that are going to makeyou the most successful. Shift activity in the company to rely on
partners for some functions. What are we really good at? Relyon somebody else for other ingredients.”

4 | Introduction

The key themes that emerged
from our CEO study:
Leadership
Flatter, faster, and more flexible structures are succeeding.
“This entire experience has made us less bureaucratic, more
responsive,” says Alex Gorsky, CEO of Johnson & Johnson, a
global producer of medical devices, pharmaceuticals, andconsumer packaged goods. The top-performing organizations
also put more emphasis on the core value proposition. As
Gorsky says, “You have to be ready to go all in.”Technology
Tech maturity is an even more important performance differentiator, with cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), and theInternet of Things (IoT) at the top of the essential tools list.
Organizations that invested in these areas performed better
than peers during the disruptions of 2020.
Employees
Remote work will be a permanent fixture as part of a hybrid
workforce that blends in-person employees with virtual
colleagues. This will shift organizational culture and demand
new management approaches and upgraded executive
capabilities.

Open innovation
CEOs anticipate fewer partnerships—but of higher strategic
importance. Why do everything yourself if you can partner withsomeone else who does it better, and together unlock fresh
opportunities?
Cybersecurity
CEOs at the top-performing organizations put higher strategic
importance on protecting against cyber risks and data
exposures. They recognize that trust has become the currencyof business ecosystems.
This report is divided into three chapters. Chapter 1, “Essential
priorities,” presents key results from the entire pool of 3,000
CEOs surveyed.
Chapter 2, “Essential advantages,” goes a layer deeper, zeroingin on CEOs of Outperformer organizations—those who thrived
relative to peers in their industry, both before the pandemic aswell as during it—and illuminating what differentiates them fromtheir Underperformer peers.
Chapter 3, “Essential lessons,” draws insights from threegroups of respondents revealed by our data. Consistent with thetheme of finding your essential advantages, we discovered that
respondents naturally grouped into segments of expertise:customer-focused, product-focused, and operations-focused(see “Research and analysis methodology” on page 50).

Introduction | 5

While these designations may seem familiar, the reinventions
required by this unique era ask for a decidedly nontraditional
formulation. In this third chapter, we highlight lessons fromwithin each group, including Outperformer and Underperformer
distinctions specific to each segment. What is essential for one
type of business, we learn, differs dramatically from the others.
Today, of course, every significant organization includes
elements of customer, product, and operations—with arequirement to be competitive in each. (Customer engagement,
for instance, is a priority that runs across all three groups.)
This is fundamentally different from the previous era ofstrategic planning, where focusing on one segment alone
might “do the job.” It also makes each segment-focused
analysis valuable for virtually every organization.
Yet CEOs can’t prioritize everything, which is why finding theiressential differentiators (and relying on partners to help
address the other areas) is so compelling. The performancegap between Outperformers and Underperformers has
widened in the past year, with differences between strategic
focus areas becoming even more pronounced.

“We’ve been building some muscle
in the organization to be betterat partnering because we can’t
do everything ourselves. We don’t
want to.”Ross McEwan, CEO, National Australia Bank

Our report concludes with an action guide that highlights
how to put these findings to work for your organization,
as well as “essential questions to ask” within each chapter.
Along the way are targeted Perspectives that address
provocative topics, such as the C-suite role that’s lost its
relevance; the troubling metric that points to continued diversityand-inclusion issues; and the emerging technology that
CEOs should not let slip into a blind spot. We also dig into
respondents by industry, identifying some unexpected
patterns. In the year ahead, the IBV will continue toaugment this report with studies of specific industries andtargeted top-executive roles, combining deep quantitative
research and distinctive qualitative analysis that help
business leaders make smarter business decisions.

6

Chapter 1

Essential priorities
The IBV’s exclusive survey of 3,000
global CEOs unearthed clear priorities
that span key areas:– Perform with purposeful agility– Make tech matter more
– Embrace emerging regulations

The business environment of 2020 has seen longstanding plans
and rules replaced by urgencies of the moment. Yet once CEOs
addressed what must be done, the questions turned to whatshould be done. What are the learnings, drawn from historicalleading practices as well as from the most successful COVID
pivots, that will produce the best results in the next two to
three years?

Perform with purposeful agility
After the uncertainty of the past year, CEOs stress organizational agility—the capability of an organization to respondquickly and pivot without losing momentum—as a top priority
for leaders to an unprecedented degree. As Suncor’s Mark Little
puts it, “What’s going to differentiate you is your ability tobe agile.”
According to our research, 56% of CEOs emphasize the need to“aggressively pursue” operational agility and flexibility over the
next two to three years (see Figure 1).

Essential priorities | 7“If you can embrace agile setups
and experiments, then you
become adaptive and nimble.”

Figure 1

Three’s a charm:
Agility, security,transparency

56%

Piyush Gupta, CEO, DBS Bank

“If you can embrace agile setups, experiments, and constantly
nurture a learning culture,” says CEO Piyush Gupta ofSingapore-based DBS Bank, one of Southeast Asia’s largest
banks, “then you become adaptive and nimble, which means
you can respond a lot more quickly to opportunity and changes
in the environment.” He adds: “That’s what we’re trying to do.”Looking ahead, CEOs recognize like never before theimportance of purposefully preparing for changes—whether
driven by competition, government, or external events—and having an infrastructure that can adjust rapidly.
The challenge often lies in identifying the clear impact of agile
initiatives, while in some cases, even “agile chaos” has resulted.
Therefore, agile ways of working need to be more purposeful.
They should include a clear focus on business outcomes andguidelines that indicate where innovation will lead to essential
next-level advantages—so that agile initiatives result inmaterial, valuable changes and real-world impact.

Top three actions of CEOs
to build a change-readyorganization.

Enhance operational
agility and flexibility

36%

41%

Reducesilo-to-silo
handoffs

Secure dataand systems

37%

40%

Establish
flexible partner
networks

Improve datatransparency

38%

Establish greater
accountability

Q. Which of the above will you most aggressively
pursue over the next 2-3 years?

8 | Essential priorities

Figure 2

Ramping
up remote

Emerging expectations
make flexibility a top
strategic priority.
61%

Empowering remote
workforce

41%

54%

Balancingbusiness
portfolio

Accelerating
agility

41%

48%

Enhancingsupply chain
continuity

Reducing
operating
costs

41%

Engaging customers
virtually

Q. How important has implementation of the above been to
your organization’s strategy since beginning 2020?

CEOs recognize that this new way of driving flexibility anddelivering innovation can only be realized with an empowered
remote workforce. While 2020 amplified a host of strategic
priorities—from supply chain continuity to virtually engaging
customers—empowering remote work was noted by CEOs as
their top concern more frequently than anything else (seeFigure 2).
“The leadership component of big business is going to be
stressed [by remote work] at a level that I don’t believe most
executives appreciate,” asserts Jeff McElfresh of AT&T
Communications. “It’s unclear to me that anyone has cracked
the code on how to operate the distributed workforce modelthat COVID has accelerated us into. Not all leaders are
comfortable managing in a distributed model. You have to be
more precise about each role and the kind of leader that best
fits. We’ve got work to do to unlock the potential.”
This is forcing very practical struggles. “We are imagining thepost-pandemic employee experience,” says CEO Roberto
Nobile of Telecom Argentina, Argentina’s leading telecommunications and entertainment company with 23,000 employees allover the country, referring to his future workforce. “How are thedynamics going to be? We are thinking in terms of digitization,
e-collaboration, agility, and total flexibility so as each team will
decide how to work. We are co-designing the processes
together, breaking down silos and old paradigms.”

Essential priorities | 9

Make tech matter more
The 3,000 CEOs surveyed cite technological factors as thenumber one most important external force that will impact theirenterprises over the next two to three years. That emphasis iswell placed. According to the IBV’s recent “Digital acceleration”
report, digital maturity is significantly correlated with financial
performance. The study found that during COVID-19, moretech-savvy organizations outperformed their less tech-savvy
peers on revenue growth by an average of 6 percentage points,
across 12 industries.1 In related research, 60% of executives
surveyed indicated that they are accelerating their companies’
digital transformations during the pandemic.2“Organizations with really good technology platforms havestood up, while those without have really struggled,” says CEO
Ross McEwan of National Australia Bank, one of the world’s 25
largest banks. He adds gratefully, “This bank had spent quite a
bit of money on redoing its platforms.”
Technology not only enables agility—it is central to enabling a
hybrid workforce, as well as both operational efficiency andcustomer engagement. “How do we leverage technology toallow new flexibility?” asks Barri Rafferty, former CEO of
Ketchum, a global communications consultancy, and now
Executive Vice President and Head of Communications at
Wells Fargo.
Which technologies are most important? The new CEO survey
results rank IoT, cloud computing, and AI as the top threetechnologies expected to help deliver results (see Figure 3).

Figure 3

The tech to
tackle now

CEOs look most to IoT,
cloud computing, and AI
to deliver results.

79%

74%

52%

Internetof Things

Cloud
computing

Artificial
intelligence

Q. Over the next 2-3 years, which technologies
will most help you deliver results?

10 | Essential priorities

Figure 4

The C-suite
counts on techCEOs view the
CIO/CTO as a
critical role.

CEO

57%

When it comes to implementing these technologies, Duncan
Painter, CEO of Ascential, a UK-based B2B media andconsultancy services company, states, “If you really want toleverage the power of being in the global cloud-driven platformworld, then you’ve got to trust partners that are expert in that.
Because the whole value and leverage you get from being[in the cloud] is the fact that you’re not trying to do it yourself.”

56%

39%

19%

CFO

COO

CIO/CTO

Q. Who from your C-suite team will play the most
crucial role for your organization?

These findings echo the IBV’s “Digital acceleration” report,
which identified cloud and AI as performance differentiators.3
This trio of capabilities is often linked and self-reinforcing. IoT
enables data collection from vehicles, industrial processes,
customer interactions, and so forth. This data is then organizedand disseminated via interconnected clouds, and often
processed and enhanced using AI. Together, IoT, cloudcomputing, and AI represent where future-focused organizations look to earn an advantage, redefining how work getsdone as what we call “intelligent workflows.”

CMO

16%
CHRO

The rising importance of tech is reflected inside the C-suiteas well. When asked to identify which other members of theC-suite will play the most crucial role for their organizations
over the next two to three years, CEOs named their tech chiefs—
Chief Information Officers (CIOs) and Chief Technology Officers(CTOs)—at more than twice the rate of Chief Marketing Officers(CMOs) and Chief Human Resources Officers (CHROs). In fact,tech chiefs are rated at the very top of the C-suite, alongside
Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) and Chief Operating Officers(COOs) (see Figure 4). This is a dramatic departure from what
we have seen in previous studies and reinforces the degree towhich CEOs see technology playing a key role across theirorganizations. (See “Perspective: The vanishing Chief Strategy
Officer” on page 11.)

Essential priorities | 11

Perspective

The vanishing
Chief Strategy Officer

57%
Since 2013, the IBV research on CEOs has included a question
about the C-suite overall: which roles will play the most crucial
functions over the next two to three years? Each year, in general,
two C-suite positions have led the pack: the Chief Financial Officer(CFO) and the Chief Operating Officer (COO). The triumvirate of CEO,CFO, and COO has remained steady.
But looking to the next level, those hoping to break into the top
ranks—and maybe position themselves to be the next CEO—haveseen dramatic shifts. Back in 2013, one of the rising positions was
Chief Innovation Officer (CIO), noted by 47% of survey respondents
and fifth ranked overall. But in the most recent survey, that role has

fallen nearly to the bottom, cited by only 4% of CEOs. Anotherrising contender in 2013 was the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO),
mentioned by 66% of respondents; here too, there’s been a falloff,with CMOs picked by just 19% of respondents today.
No position has done more of a disappearing act, though, than the
Chief Strategy Officer (CSO). Back in 2013, 67% of CEOs named the
CSO as a crucial role—second only to CFOs. This year, the strategy
role fell off the map, prized by only 6% of their bosses.
Where has the attention shifted? To the tech chief—the Chief
Technology Officer (CTO) or Chief Information Officer (CIO).
This year, the CTO/CIO role finished in the third position, identified
by 39% of the CEOs, its highest-ever spot in our surveys.

12 | Essential priorities“Technology is becoming ubiquitous in everything we do,”says Alex Gorsky of Johnson & Johnson. “Whether it’s
telemedicine, or the way we’ve used data to fundamentally
understand the genome of the COVID-19 virus to be able toproduce our vaccine, or whether it’s the way we’re integrating
data and working with large healthcare systems to identify thebest locations to introduce clinical trials—the uptake of digitalconnectedness is just going to further accelerate.”

Embrace emerging regulations
The third priority area involves regulation. Over the past 17
years of CEO research by the IBV, regulatory concern has neverfinished above the fourth position among expected top external
forces cited by respondents. For nearly a decade, the firstand second spots jockeyed between technology factors andmarket factors (encompassing competition, market dynamics,
changing customer expectations, and so on). But this year,
regulation leapfrogged to second, cited as a priority by half theCEOs in our study (see Figure 5).

Figure 5

The regulatory
reckoning

2004

2006

2008

2010

2012

2013

Digital maturity oftenaligns with strong financial
performance, but
regulatory concerns
are surging.

2015

2017

2019

2020
57% Technological factors
50% Regulatory concerns
50% Market factors
44% Macro-economic factors
44% People skills
27% Globalization
22% Environmental issues
15% Socioeconomic factors
13% Geopolitical factors

Q. What are the most important external forces that will impact your enterprise in the next 2-3 years?

Essential priorities | 13

“Technology is
becoming ubiquitousin everything we do.”Alex Gorsky, CEO, Johnson & Johnson

This unquestionably reflects a rising assertivenessby governments around privacy, data, trade and—
amplified by COVID-19—health. Lockdowns andquarantines set a new precedent for government’s
power over business that has at least one out of two
CEOs looking over their shoulders.

Chapter 1. Essential priorities

Three essential questions
How do we drive purposeful agility
with a remote workforce?
– What changes should we make to our ways of working andorganizational model, including our geographical footprint?
– How do we need to change our organizational culture toembrace a hybrid workforce as a new business reality?
– What additional support mechanisms does my workforce
need to be productive and engaged?
Are we leveraging tech toits full potential?
– How will we identify new technologies and capabilities?
– What steps will we take to prioritize and integrate
our technology investments?
– Where are the greatest opportunities to strengthen
our competitive advantage using technology?
How might regulation impact
our strategy?
– What actions should we take now to prepare for
expected changes to the regulatory environment?
– How will we redefine or establish new partnerships
to manage regulatory changes?
– What new opportunities could emerge as the resultof new regulations?

14

Chapter 2

Essential advantages
Our research revealed differences
between Outperformers andUnderperformers in five key areas:– Leadership– Technology– Employees– Open innovation– Cybersecurity

Traditional ways of assessing performance, of judging whichbusinesses are worth learning from, were dramaticallyupended in 2020. The global pandemic and ensuing rolling
lockdowns ravaged some industries and locations whileboosting others. The heavy impact of circumstantial factors
meant that sometimes merely being in the right place was
rewarded, and merely being in the wrong place was punished.
(See “Perspective: The performance paradox” on page 15.)
To adjust for this reality, the IBV applied a two-factor screen
to the data provided by 3,000 CEOs. We identified those whoreported high revenue growth compared to their peers over
the three years prior to 2020 and performance on parwith or exceeding peers during 2020 itself. About one in five
respondents met that two-pronged standard of outperformance. A similar-size group of respondents, one in five,reported below-par revenue growth for both periods. Whenthe IBV compared the responses of the Outperformers withthose of the Underperformers, dramatic differences emerged.
Outperformers entered 2020 with higher revenue growth thantheir competitors and have since widened their advantage—
from a 5% to 7% point difference in annual rate of growth.
For organizations with $10 billion in annual revenue, thisdifference in revenue growth is equivalent to an additional$700 million annually.
Underperformers, perhaps unsurprisingly, are 31% more
likely than Outperformers to cite cash flow as a future concern.
They are also twice as likely to agree that the competitive gap
between winners and losers is widening—a reflection of thevulnerable position they find themselves in.

Essential advantages | 15

Perspective

The performance paradox:
Luck, delusion, and overconfidence

Just because your business is doing well, don’t presume you’re
doing things right. And if your business is struggling, don’t presume
you’ve botched something. This is the reality of the pandemic
economy.
The risk of delusion on both sides of the equation has never been
higher. Those in the hospitality and travel sectors got hammered in2020 regardless of strategy, practices, or talent. Those who sellcleaning supplies, nasal swabs, and pet food? Their ascension may
be more about being in the right place at the right time than any
unusually psychic strategy.
“If you’ve been lucky because things have been on your track, don’t
be too happy,” says the CEO of a consumer wearables manufacturer
in Asia. “Just as war can stimulate military development, when the
war is over, military technology must return to civilian uses. It’s allabout the year after.”

The actionable marketplace information available to businessleaders is harder to interpret than ever, with the vision of future
impact unclear. Some organizations have arguably become
overconfident based on good performances during the pandemic.
In fact, a dominant number of the respondents in our productfocused segment express confidence about their preparedness on
all manner of future risks. In many circumstances, this may prove
unwarranted.
CEOs should remind themselves and their teams: simply relying on
the experience of the lucky—or negating the achievements of theunlucky—is unsophisticated and potentially misleading. Data-driven
decision making, with heightened attention paid to suspect andbiased information, is paramount. Boards of directors, tasked withassessing CEOs, should be particularly vigilant, both in potentiallyrewarding those buoyed by tailwinds and in critiquing those facing
uncommonly challenging headwinds.

16 | Essential advantages

Figure 6

Concentratingwhere it counts

As a group, Outperformers
agree on where to focus,
while Underperformers lackconsensus on priorities.

The differences between Outperformers and Underperformers
are revealed in each of the five key areas of Outperformer focus:– Leadership– Technology– Employees– Open innovation

Underperformers

Outperformers
1

2

3

Deliver better
customer experiences
Develop stronger
customer relationships

1

60%

Deliver more innovationin business models

48%
2

Improve efficiency

55%

Improve efficiency

41%
3

Deliver better
customer experiences

4

Deliver more innovationin products and services

51%
4

Increase sustainability

38%

37%
5

Deliver more innovationin business models

33%
5

Improve distribution
channels

37%
6

Deliver more innovationin products and services– Cybersecurity

32%
6

32%

Q. Which of the above represent your organization’s
highest priorities over the next 2-3 years?

Increase sustainability

32%

Factor 1. Leadership comes first
Across our study, Outperformers demonstrate a far more
focused set of priorities compared to Underperformers,
whose responses are more distributed (see Figure 6). The
Outperformers are not passively gathering informationor hedging their bets waiting for the dust to settle. Regardlessof their specific areas of focus, we consistently see the decisive
strategic leadership that sets Outperformers apart. In fact, 85%of Outperformers overall cite leadership as critical to businessperformance. Only 69% of Underperformers report the samepriority.
As demonstrated in the analyses above, in addition to making
more explicit choices throughout, Outperformers consistently
emphasize customer-related items. To learn more about thesepriorities, we provide an in-depth analysis in Chapter 3 (checkthe “Essential lessons in customer focus” section on page 28).

Essential advantages | 17

One more prime example: Outperformers identify a sense of
purpose and mission as critical to engaging employees at a rate
53% higher than Underperformers (see Figure 7). In today’s
trust climate, where faith in institutions overall has been
declining, that is an emerging competitive advantage. “There’s
a higher expectation about the role of business in society thana year ago,” says Alex Gorsky of Johnson & Johnson. “It’sbecome part of the vernacular in a much more significant way.
Expectations have changed.” As Franz Reiner, CEO of Daimler
Mobility, a global financial and mobility services provider, puts
it, “What does your company stand for, and what do you wantto achieve?”“We are here for a purpose, and the focus of the company is
not just to make money,” says DBS Bank’s Piyush Gupta.
“That’s deeply rooted in the company. To that extent, I think
we have a head start on many others.”
The heightened employee engagement from these efforts
paradoxically helps performance. As the IBV CHRO study“Unplug from the past” notes, “Organizations that score in
the top 25% on employee experience report more than double
the return on sales compared to organizations in the bottom
quartile.”4 Additionally, in the groundbreaking IBM study “The
Employee Experience Index,” employee experience is positively
associated with increased motivation and discretionary effort,and decreased turnover intentions.5

Figure 7

The powerof purpose

Above all, Outperformers
view purpose and mission as
an employee engagement
essential.

Sense and purpose

Outperformers

46%

Underperformers

53% more
Q. What are the most important organizational attributes
to engage employees over the next 2-3 years?

30%

18 | Essential advantages

Factor 2. Technology is more than a tool

Figure 8

Seekingsolid ground

Outperformers know that as
technology evolves, so mustits foundation.

The CEOs of Underperformer organizations tend to underappreciate the impact of technology, focusing instead on traditional
marketplace concerns. When identifying the top challenges
over the next two to three years, CEOs of underperforming
organizations select market shifts more than any other factor.

Underperformers

The CEOs of Outperformers, meanwhile, are most focusedon the forward-looking risks and opportunities of emerging
technologies. As C.K. Venkataraman, Managing Director of Titan
Company Limited, a lifestyle product company in India, notes:“We had invested substantially in [emerging] technologies
starting about five years back. We were growing along a certain
geometric progression curve, but then COVID came and took it
to an exponential curve. The customer adoption acceleration,
as well as the company execution of its digital strategy acceleration, both ended up happening because of COVID. And I think
we ended up leapfrogging at least two years.”

Outperformers
1

Technology infrastructure

1Market shifts

2

Regulation

2

Regulation

3

The “anywhere” workplace

4

Cyber risk

5

62%

48%

51%
3

Cyber risk

35%

50%
4

Technology infrastructure

32%

44%
5

Public health incidents

Sustainability

30%

41%
6

6

Market shifts

50%

Public health incidents

37%

Q. Which of the above elements do you expect to create
the greatest challenges for your organization over the
next 2-3 years?

29%

Emerging tech must be built on something, and Outperforming
CEOs identify tech infrastructure as a top challenge twice
as often as Underperformers. The specific figure, 62% of
Outperformer respondents, is significantly higher than thatreceived by any of 17 other specific challenges we asked
about (see Figure 8). This also underscores the appreciation
by Outperformers of how quickly tech continues to move,as well as how laggards overlook that factor.
When it comes to specific technologies, Underperformers seemto be a cycle behind. They identify chatbots, voice technologies,
and Natural Language Processing as key to delivering futureEssential advantages | 19

results more than three times as much as Outperformers.
Certainly these tools can be powerful (see the IBV study“The value of virtual agent technology” for benefits).6 But
Underperformers should consider that, without being pairedwith other sophisticated technologies, these tools may not
ultimately deliver differentiating performance. As explored in
the IBV’s recent report on digital acceleration, “Each industry
has a unique mix of technologies. . . . a ‘technology fingerprint,’
so to speak. . . . and it is important to understand the unique
technology mix that leads to optimal performance within
individual industries.”7 Across 12 industries in the study,
tech-savvy organizations realized a revenue growth premiumof 6% during the COVID pandemic compared to nonadopters.8
Meanwhile, Outperformers expect AI to deliver results in thenext two to three years—and to do so at more than double thefrequency of Underperformers (see Figure 9).
This gap in appreciation indicates that those already trailing in
AI adoption may fall further behind. Notably, AI is specifically
identified in the IBV’s “Digital acceleration” report as a differentiating technology across multiple industries.9 Outperformers
appear to have recognized this appealing combination of
performance impact and relatively low adoption to date as anopportunity to gain early-mover advantage. The high opportunity
cost of a tech gap has particular implications when it comes tothe next impending computing revolution. For example, while
few CEOs identify quantum as critical to delivering near-term
results, the technology’s longer-term potential warrants serious
consideration (see “Perspective: The quantum opportunity” onpage 20).

Figure 9

Artificial intelligence,real results

More than twice as many
Outperformers expect resultsfrom AI than Underperformers.

Artificial intelligence>2x

Underperformers

30%

Outperformers

72%

Q. Which of the above technologies will most help you
deliver results over the next 2-3 years?

20 | Essential advantages

Perspective

The quantum
opportunity

What technology do CEOs anticipate helping deliver the most resultsover the next two to three years? When presented with a menu of 16
options to choose from—from biometrics to autonomous vehicles to5G—the big winners were cloud computing, IoT, and AI. Even theCEOs from Underperformer enterprises largely agreed with thesepriorities.

Certainly quantum can be difficult to discern, and with few experts
embedded in organizations, understanding how it fits into workflows
and adds the most value can be challenging. At the same time,quantum has been advancing at a steady pace toward broad
applicability, with dramatic potential implications across industries
and operations much more diverse than just tech stacks.10

Among the technologies near the bottom of the list? Quantum
computing. 89% of CEOs do not expect quantum to deliver results
for their organizations in the next two to three years. Yet thiscertainly stands in stark contrast to the tech-industry media
coverage and investments quantum garners.

There is an echo here with how AI was viewed not long ago: as a techobsession and curiosity that was far enough from the realm of
applicability that it could be ignored. Yet those enterprises thatchose to invest in and grow comfortable with applying AI were thosemost likely to take advantage as it matured and delivered
outperforming results. CEOs who ignore quantum and allow it tobecome a blind spot may be doing so at their own peril—a parallel tothe missed opportunity when AI was emerging a decade ago.

Essential advantages | 21

Factor 3. The hybrid workplace—and its
employees—can’t be taken for granted“What does the workplace look like in the future?” asks
Barri Rafferty, former CEO of Ketchum and now Executive
Vice President at Wells Fargo. “How do we re-engage aroundcollaboration and ways to be together again?”
When it comes to the workplace, the perspectives ofOutperformers and Underperformers diverge sharply. The
pandemic-fueled, remote “anywhere” workplace is among themost cited areas of future focus by Outperformers, with 50%
of CEOs identifying it as a key challenge. Underperformers
identify the anywhere workplace at half that rate—on a parwith topics such as tariffs.
Surprisingly, despite inherent differences across industries
when it comes to the issues associated with a hybrid workforce,in only one industry, local government, do more than 50% of
Underperformers identify this challenge. Even in the otherindustries with relatively high percentages of Underperformers
focused on the anywhere workplace—retail/consumer banking,IT services, and retail—Underperformers still consistently lag
behind their outperforming competitors on this issue. In otherwords, while Outperformers are actively preparing for thechallenges and opportunities associated with the anywhere
workplace, Underperformers risk falling further behind.

“With remote working,you need to keep the soulof the company alive.”
Piyush Gupta, CEO, DBS Bank

22 | Essential advantages

Figure 10

People overprofit97% more Outperformers
than Underperformers
support employee well-being,
even if it hurts profitability.

Outperformers
Underperformers

97%
higherOutperformers also focus more on employee well-being,with 97% more of them than Underperformers supporting
workforce health and wellness even if it costs near-term
profit (see Figure 10). This finding reinforces data fromanother IBV study, “Accelerating the journey to HR 3.0,”
which found that CHROs at outperforming organizations
reported their companies “support as a core value”
the physical, emotional, and financial well-being of
their employees at rates nearly three times those of
Underperformers.11 This support has to be not justwell-intended, but well-received. “The far most importantcapability is human capability,”says Younus Al Nasser, CEO of
Smart Dubai, the government agency that facilitates the city’s
digital transformation. “Technology advancements comewhen you have the right human capabilities.”
However, there’s one important point to consider. A C-suite
focus on employee well-being may not be enough if theemployees themselves aren’t feeling the love. (See“Perspective: What ‘employee well-being’ means toCEOs” on page 23.)

77%

39%

Support well-being

Q. To what extent do you support the well-being of employees
during this time of crisis, even if it costs you profitability?

Essential advantages | 23

Perspective

What “employee well-being” means
to CEOs—and to everyone else

The pandemic has brought a refreshing reinforcement amongcorporate leaders: the mental and physical well-being of theirpeople is a major priority. Part of that has been simple humancaring, and part has been smart business practice. Fernando
González of CEMEX notes that having healthcare centers in placeat his company’s facilities proved a competitive advantage: “Wedidn’t have any material disruption of our supply chain. Someof our competitors did, companies just shutting down, closing
temporarily to deal with infections in their work centers.”
In many organizations, employees have felt decidedly lessenthusiastic about corporate efforts. Our recent report “Closing thechasm” compared employer perspectives with those of employees.
When asked if companies were supporting the physical andemotional health of employees, 80% of executives agreed orstrongly agreed. Yet when the same question was posed to
employees, the figure was a glaringly low 46%. When asked if
organizations were providing adequate training on how to work in
new ways prompted by the pandemic, 74% of executives agreed,
while only 38% of employees said the same.12
The message here is that, for many organizations, sensing-andresponding processes are underdeveloped or just plain ineffective.
If you think you’re providing a benefit, and the recipient of that
benefit doesn’t see it the same way, you’ve failed. Employee
expectations of their employers have permanently changed.
There’s clearly more work to be done to deliver on the promiseof comprehensive employee well-being.

24 | Essential advantages

Figure 11

Skills in
the spotlight

Outperformers emphasizeindustry-specific skills 79%
more than Underperformers.

Underperformers

Outperformers
1

1

Industry-specific skills

Technology skills

47%

70%
2

Technology skills

2

44%

3

3

Flexibility, agility,
and adaptability

43%

51%
4

4

Innovation

Time management

43%

46%
5

Teaming and collaboration

5

6

6

Ethics and integrity

Industry-specific skills

39%

40%
40%

Q. What are the most critical skills your organizationneeds over the next 2-3 years?

This echoes the “essential” focus emerging throughout thisyear’s CEO Study. Successfully navigating this environment will
require strong leadership to reshape how organizations recruit,
grow, and retain critical skills.

Innovation

69%
Flexibility, agility,
and adaptability

In all this, we anticipate an even bigger need for loyal andproductive employees with industry-specific skills. Even prior
to 2020, IBV research explored the challenges facing organizations related to talent shortages and the impact of rapidlychanging skills requirements.13 Outperformers now stress theimportance of industry-specific skills at almost twice thefrequency of Underperformers (see Figure 11).

Analytics and data science

37%

Factor 4: Partner to win with
open innovation
Over the past several years, we have seen a steep decline in
the percentage of CEOs who expect more partnering opportunities in the years ahead. From a high of 79% in 2015, only
36% of CEOs in our 2020 research expect more partnering
opportunities.
It is therefore particularly notable that, in a reflection of the“focus on what we do best” mantra, Outperformers—in clear
contrast to Underperformers—report a heightened emphasis on
partnerships. Asked to identify those factors that increased inimportance most in 2020, 63% of Outperformers identify
partnerships, compared with only 32% of Underperformers(see Figure 12).

Essential advantages | 25

Looking ahead, 47% more Outperformers than Underperformers expect to aggressively pursue establishing flexible
partner networks. They stress customer relationships andexperiences at 68% and 59% higher rates, respectively, than
Underperformers, indicating a more outward-looking
perspective.
In other words, organizations are forming fewer partnerships.
But Outperformers stand out in their recognition that thepartnerships they do engage in are more important—andmore valuable—than ever. The CEO of a UK-based generalmerchandise retailer makes it clear: “Through partners andby building a relevant ecosystem, we can focus on the areas
where we bring the best value and thus are able to accelerate
outcomes.”
To optimize the advantages of open innovation requires trusted,
secure, reliable partnerships. By tapping into ecosystems that
amplify their effectiveness, Outperformers are extending their
dominance over inward-looking laggards. Duncan Painter ofAscential states, “In the last five years, companies who truly
embrace ecosystems recognize that what they’ve got to do is
be collaborative and enabling to take advantage. You giveexpertise to others, but not try and replicate what others do. . . .
Respect of someone else’s expertise just gets you there much
faster. And by being there faster, you get greater results.”

Figure 12

Focus on our best,
partner for the rest

Outperformers report
partnering for neededcapabilities 97% more often
than Underperformers.
Partnerships

97%
more
often

Underperformers

32%

Outperformers

63%

Q. How has the COVID-19 pandemic changed the importance ofpartnerships in driving business performance?

26 | Essential advantages

Figure 13

Technical
safeguards

Outperformers view
technology as a potent tool
to enhance security.

Cybersecurity importance

Outperformers

46%

Underperformers

31% more
Q. Where in your organization do you see technology
having the greatest impact over the next 2-3 years?

35%

Factor 5: Cybersecurity provides
a foundation
In parallel with their deeper focus on ecosystems, remote
activities, and technology overall, Outperformers distinguishthemselves from Underperformers in one more significant area:a heightened focus on cybersecurity. 26% more Outperformers
than Underperformers identify cyber risk as among theirgreatest challenges over the next two to three years. The
number two factor Outperformers will aggressively pursue
is securing data and systems. Furthermore, 31% more
Outperformers than Underperformers cite security and risk
as an area where they expect technology to have the greatest
impact (see Figure 13).
Outperformers appear to recognize that digital security andtrust need to be integrated into strategy, given the essential
reliance on technology for partnering, culture, customer
engagement, and more. The importance and impact of tech
is so important, so central, that cybersecurity is elevated to ajustifiably highest-order priority. This is consistent with researchfrom the IBV “Digital acceleration” study, which found top
performers to be 72% more likely to use AI to gather and assessthreat intelligence. By not preparing, Underperformers reveal
their tech naiveté.14 They also may be creating exposure forthemselves—because even less tech-mature businesses arestill, essentially, tech-dependent.

Essential advantages | 27

Chapter 2. Essential advantages

Five essential questions
How can we develop more
focused strategic leadership?
– What are the new fundamental requirements of ournext generation of leaders?

Could we do more to support employee
wellness, including a focus on mental health?
– What actions should we take to help ensure our employees
are healthy, safe, and financially secure?
– How do we identify emerging and persistent employee
issues?

– How do customers help drive our leadership decisions?

– How can we go about growing trust with our employees,
and establishing a sense of purpose and mission?

– In what new ways will we lead by example to also
engage with digital-native employees?

How can partnerships
help us innovate?

Are we talking about technology
more than implementing it?

– How can we use an expanded ecosystem to positively impact
our products, workflows, and experiences?

– How have we integrated technology and technology leaders
into our strategic planning processes?

– What capabilities can we delegate to, obtain from, or jointly
develop with our most trusted partners?

– How have we changed our KPIs to reflect new capabilities andobjectives?

– How can technology enhance transparency and flexibility
with our partners?

– What steps are we taking to grow skills and attract top
technology talent?

How do we embed cybersecurity as afoundational element in everything we do?
– How do we organize responsibilities so that we can help
develop comprehensive end-to-end cybersecurity, including
our ecosystem?
– What do we need to put in place so that every employee feels
responsible for cybersecurity?
– How can we use our cybersecurity strengths to enhancecustomer, partner, and employee trust?

28

Chapter 3

Essential lessons
Our 3,000 respondents fall into threenatural groupings, each with their own
unique practices and priorities:– Customer-focused (50%)– Product-focused (30%)– Operations-focused (20%)

To unlock even more specific insights—and mindful of CEOs’rising emphasis on finding distinctive advantage—our analysis
went a layer deeper. Applying a data-driven segmentation
analysis, the IBV discovered three natural groupings within the
3,000 respondents: customer-focused, product-focused, andoperations-focused. (See “Perspective: And the winning modelis . . .” on page 49.)
By drilling deep into each group, specialized and distinctive
leading practices were illuminated—some of which differentiate
the groups from each other, and others that differentiate
Outperformers and Underperformers within a specific group.

Essential lessons in customer focus:
Raising the experience bar
The largest of the three groupings, covering 48% of the pool,are respondents whose most important business priorities
revolve around customers, clients, and citizens. While allorganizations are active in this arena, CEOs in this category giveheightened attention to customer relationships. During 2020,
they stressed virtual engagement with end users 50% morethan other CEOs. For example, they are more likely to include
customers in development and testing as well as in validating
privacy and security policy.

Essential lessons | 29

“We were more inward looking in our first 40 years,” says CEO
Xia Shizhong of Camel Group, a large automotive starter battery
manufacturer in Hubei Province, China. “In the future, we need
to be more outward looking.”
The customer-related lessons become acute when comparing
Outperformers in the group to Underperformers. Consider
acting on customer feedback, a logical and expected priority
for this realm. This is cited as the most important method ofcreating a differentiated consumer experience—but by the
Underperformers.
Of course, Outperformers value customer feedback too, but
their first and second priorities when it comes to customer
experience are customer-service etiquette and dynamic
feedback—feedback that’s smart, curated in real time, andfueled by technology such as AI. The message is that simply
giving customers what they say they want isn’t enough. The goal
should be to delight customers at every interaction by treatingthem better than they expect, acknowledging that a customer’s
impression of the organization is only as good as their lastexperience. Real-time dynamic feedback helps Outperformers
achieve that goal.
In our analysis of customer-focused organizations, we found
Underperformers to be more reactive and Outperformers to be
substantially more flexible and dynamic through empowered
employees. “The bar has been raised higher,” says Piyush
Gupta of DBS Bank.

“The big change,” Gupta says, “is hyper-digitalization.”
When asked where technology would have the greatest
impact over the next two to three years, customer-focused
Underperformers cited consumer insights—harvestingdata about consumer behavior and preferences. Yet for
Outperformers, the by-far dominant answer was consumer
experience—using those consumer insights to actually drive
decisions and technical strategies that enhance engagement(see Figure 14).
The lagging organizations look to data for competitive clues;
they collect data and use it to give consumers what they ask for.
Outperformers take it one giant step further. They are proactive
in how they apply data, using it to emphasize engagement.
Rather than simply respond to data, Outperformers use it as atool to build and shape customer relationships. The goal isdesigning and developing informed, differentiating experiences.

“We used AI during the pandemic
to understand where demandis recovering. We were looking
ahead of the curve.”
Calin Rovinescu, CEO, Air Canada

30 | Essential lessons

Figure 14

Creating compelling
customer experiences

Outperformers don’t tap data
in a one-sided search for
insights, but use it to craft
consumer relationships.

Customer-focused Outperformers

Consistent with their focus on positive customer experienceand partnering, customer-focused Outperformers cite ethics
and integrity as critical human skills 56% more frequently than
Underperformers—they know that trying to exploit or takeadvantage of customers or partners is a short-term, loser’s
game. This reflects an acceleration of a finding in the IBV
study “The enterprise guide to closing the skills gap” that saw
ethics and integrity, among other behavioral skills, increasing
in importance over time.15 Notably, customer-focused
Outperformers also identify ethics and values as criticalattributes to engage their own employees 88% more
frequently than Underperformers.

Customer-focused Underperformers

60%
more
32%
less

75%

47%

Customer experience

34%

50%

Customer insights

Q. Where in your organization do you see technology having thegreatest impact over the next 2-3 years? Note: Respondents arecustomer-focused Outperformers and Underperformers.

In their pursuit of excellence, Outperformers also cite platforms
and partnerships among the factors most responsible for theirsuccess. This indicates an openness to other modes ofrelationship building and a willingness to leverage outside
expertise, ecosystems, and open innovation. Underperformers
see value in these tools only half as often.

Essential lessons | 31

Importantly, what further differentiates the top tier of customerfocused organizations is how they’re using technology at theleadership level: two out of three Outperformer CEOs specifically
cite the role of tech in driving decision-making processes; about
half as many Underperformers rely on such tech application.
“The more data, the more difficult the decision making,” says
Xunfeng Liu, chairman of China’s Shanghai Huayi Group, a large
chemical products company with global operations, “but themore data, the more accurate the decision making.”

Air Canada CEO Calin Rovinescu offers a specific example from2020 of just what AI can deliver to drive decision making: “We
used AI during the pandemic to understand where demand isrecovering,” he says. “We could not use any of the tools we hadbuilt previously, because they were based on historical data.
And all that data was thrown out the window. So we were using
AI to see what hotels are seeing, what car rental companies areseeing, what Airbnb is seeing. We were looking ahead of thecurve.”

This is a clarion call for applying AI in customer-focused
efforts, where data can be voluminous and even overwhelming. A telling comparison: Underperformers in thisgroup cite augmented reality and virtual reality as key driversof results over the next several years at more than four times
the frequency of Outperformers; they apparently see a silver
bullet in these technologies that Outperformers do not. Yet
conversely, when it comes to AI, Underperformers are far lesscommitted, with only one in four respondents citing it as apriority. For Outperformers, AI is championed by a whopping
82% of CEOs.

The digital maturity gap between Outperformers andUnderperformers highlights the importance of adopting
and embedding ever-evolving new technologies—and how
significant the differentiation gap becomes after a few years.
It is a powerful reminder for CEOs to stay alert and proactively
map a path of new tech adoption, from AI and hybrid cloud tohigh precision computing to quantum.
As a critical final piece to the customer service puzzle, 72%of customer-focused Outperformers identify protecting against
cybersecurity risks as a top-three priority—alongside agility
and empowering remote work. This is a reflection of theirreliance on—and commitment to—digital tools and experiences.
But it also indicates the prioritizing of consumer trust as adifferentiator—validating the central theme of the 2019 IBM
C-suite Study, “Build your trust advantage.”16 Among thetech-lagging Underperformers, cybersecurity implementation isnoted as important by only 24% of respondents (see Figure 15).

32 | Essential lessons

Chapter 3. Essential lessons

Figure 15

Boosting
cybersecurity

Outperformers understandthe urgency of keeping digital
tools safe.
Cybersecurity importanceThree essential questions forthe customer-focused organization
Are we providing a differentiatedcustomer experience?
– How are customers defining what we should be doing?
– Are we doing enough with the data we collect from customers
to help create a differentiated customer experience?
– In what ways do we anticipate changing customer needs todrive sustainable differentiation?

200%
more

How does technology help drive
our decision making?
– How are we realizing the benefits of our past investments indata?
– Where are we leveraging AI and other decision-enhancing
tools?
– How can we better focus our teams on uniquely humandecisions and activities?

Customer-focused
Underperformers

24%

Customer-focused
Outperformers

72%

Q. How important has protecting against new
cybersecurity risks been to your organization’s strategy
since the beginning of 2020?

Are we prioritizing customer trust?
– How are we using trust as a differentiator with ourcustomers?
– Which of our actions balance privacy and security withcompelling customer engagement?
– How have we built security into all of our partnerships andworkflows?

Essential lessons | 33

Perspective

The persistent
diversity gap

The broad global dialogue about racial and gender equity has beenmuch discussed in C-suites around the world. The IBV is currently
exploring diversity and inclusion (D&I) in a series of studies. (The
first, “Untapped potential: The Hispanic talent advantage,” wasreleased in December 2020.17) Our research finds that while
aspirations may be high, implementation remains a work inprogress.
When asked if D&I behaviors are central criteria for leadership,
the CEOs in our C-suite Study expressed positive conviction.
Outperformers agreed 29% more frequently than Underperformers,
an indication that D&I practices can feed financial results. “I think
diverse leadership will be a very powerful thing for our organization,”says CEO Radhika Gupta of India’s Edelweiss Asset Management,
one of India’s fastest-growing asset management companies.
“Times are so different and so volatile and different kinds of people
bring so many different things to the table.”

Yet, for most organizations, when it comes to putting that conviction
into action, the results are troubling. D&I was noted as a measurable
part of financial performance by only one in four respondents, withlittle differentiation between Outperformers and Underperformers.
If what’s measured is what matters most, then for mostorganizations, D&I falls short.
Equally troubling, when asked about the most importantorganizational attributes for engaging employees, D&I ranked near
the bottom of a 13-choice list. Even among Outperformers—thosearguably with the most financial leeway to invest in support of theaspiration—D&I was cited by only 17% of CEO respondents, ending
up in the twelfth position.

34 | Essential lessons

Essential lessons in product focus:

Figure 16

Embrace risk—
but be prepared
Product-focused
Outperformers
Product-focused
Underperformers

97% of product-focused
Outperformers haveconfidence in their risk
readiness.

55% | 21%
Confident

The innovation priority
The second-largest of the three groupings identified by the
IBV’s segmentation analysis—covering 30% of the 3,000
CEOs—are respondents whose most important businesspriorities revolve around products and services. Thesebusinesses are active with customers as well, of course, but
CEOs here give heightened attention to product and service
innovation. (See “Perspective: CEO spotlight—What’s yourvanilla?” on page 35).
“Users can change products in an instant,” as the CEO of aconsumer wearables manufacturer in Asia puts it. “They are
more educated, more discerning. Bad products have no opportunities. We can outsource channels and suppliers, but productcreativity cannot be bought. If I had to choose one ability, I’dselect product sensitivity.”

3% | 45%
Not confident

Q. How confident are you that your organization isprepared for major disruptions over the next 2-3 years?

42% | 34%
Moderately
confidentInterestingly, this is the group reporting the least impact
from the COVID-19 convulsions of 2020. Two-thirds ofthe product-focused Outperformers, in fact, reported an
expectation not just to best their peers over the year, but forcontinued growth in absolute terms. They report remarkableconfidence, too, in their preparation for a broad range of risks;
97% of these Outperformers say they are at least moderately
confident (see Figure 16). (Whether that confidence is wellplaced is an open question. See “Perspective: The performanceparadox” on page 15.)

Essential lessons | 35

Perspective

CEO spotlight—
What’s your vanilla?

In the IBV’s interviews with top CEOs, one theme cameup repeatedly—the need to focus. Jeff McElfresh of AT&T
Communications offered a particularly tasty analogy:“There are many things that we could choose to do—and we will
never be best in class at some,” McElfresh says. “We could build agreat oven and, man, we got the best cost structure on flour, so webake cakes. But we don’t have to design the icing. Maybe we partnerwith others. We focus on what we do really well and rely on
somebody else for some of these other ingredients.”

McElfresh goes a step further: “And it may not be a complete cakeat all that we sell. Sometimes people just really want tasty vanilla
ice cream.” For AT&T Communications, he says, vanilla ice cream
revolves around ubiquitous access to the telecom network.
“We’re pretty sure, based on analysis that we’ve done, that in adown market, this vanilla ice cream is a bigger success and a bigger
expected market. And in an upside market, it’s a raging success.”
So what’s your vanilla? “In order to be effective, you focus not on 50
flavors of ice cream, you rally the power of this massive organization
around one,” McElfresh observes. “That helps improve our chance ofhigh-quality execution.”

36 | Essential lessons“Purposeful innovation is very
important in what we do.”Radhika Gupta, CEO, Edelweiss Asset Management

What they are worried about, at a higher rate than other CEOs,
is regulation. CEOs of product-focused organizations cite
regulation as a concern over the next three years 23% more
often than their underperforming product-focused peers.
Outperformers are also more likely to stress customer
relationships and experiences—demonstrating a stronger
focus on and recognition of the close ties between products
and customers. Edelweiss Asset Management’s Radhika Gupta
highlights this: “Purposeful innovation is very important inwhat we do. Every time we’re thinking about doing something,
we’re asking ourselves, ‘Are we doing something to solve a
consumer problem, or are we just doing something to serve ourown purposes?’”
While product and services innovation is noted as the highest
future priority by both product-focused leaders and laggards
alike, the laggards dedicate extra effort to some telling areas.
Roughly twice as many Underperformers as Outperformers
cite brand and social media among their most important differentiating factors today. And Underperformers rank improving
the effectiveness of marketing and sales as their secondhighest priority for the future. This could indicate a reliance on
packaging and promotion, rather than product quality itself.

Essential lessons | 37

For product-focused Outperformers, sales and marketingfinishes in the eighth slot, identified almost 40% lessfrequently. In other words, the Underperformers are focusing
on the message (perhaps to counterbalance concerns about
what they are offering). The Outperformers may expect that the
intrinsic value of their products and services will, to a certain
degree, prevail. In that case, their products and services
can essentially sell themselves. The product-focused
Outperformers recognize the importance of human-centric
design and product and service excellence as the prime routeto lasting success.

Figure 17

Capacity
counts“Just-in-time”
planning has given way to“just-in-case” preparation.

6%

Prioritizing
just-in-time inventory

7xhigherThere is also an intriguing difference between leaders andlaggards when it comes to supply chains. For those engaged
with physical goods, 2020 provided a bracing wake-up call.
But not everyone has been answering that call with the same
intensity. The product-focused Outperformers report prioritizing spare capacity at a seven times higher rate thanprioritizing just-in-time inventory (see Figure 17).

Product-focused
Outperformers

42%
Prioritizing
sparecapacity52%
No change

08

23%

64%

No change

Prioritizing
sparecapacity

13%

Product-focused
Underperformers

Prioritizing just-in-timeinventory

02

04

04
Q. In which direction will you be making
changes to your supply chain?

00
01

01

00

38 | Essential lessons

Figure 18

Difficult decisions
Product-focused
Outperformers

To deal with recent volatility,
product-focused
Outperformers took more
employee-related actions.

Product-focused
Underperformers
Reduce employee
pay/benefits

43%
30%

Furlough/lay off
employees

31%
28%

Renegotiate
partnerships

28%
32%

Restructure yourorganization

21%
31%

Withdraw frommarkets

15%
24%

Abandoninvestments

10%
25%

Q. What are the most difficult decisions you have had tomake over the past 6 months (Q2-Q3 2020)?

This is an extraordinary transition, reflective of an ongoing
global reshuffling of supply chain capacity and planning. And
while Outperformers respond aggressively, product-focused
Underperformers prioritize spare capacity at barely half therate. Nearly two-thirds are planning no change at all to theirpriorities. In fact, Underperformers have been more apt topull back on innovation efforts overall. When asked to identify
difficult decisions made during 2020 uncertainty, productfocused Underperformers indicated abandoning investments
150% more frequently than Outperformers (see Figure 18).
In terms of tech, product-focused Outperformers point to
distributed ledgers such as blockchain as potential results drivers
at nearly twice the rate of their underperforming peers. 83%
more Outperformers than Underperformers also expect 3D
printing—an emerging design and manufacturing tool thatenables new creations and reduces cost points—to drive value.
The product-focused Outperformers also expect augmented
reality and virtual reality to drive results at a level that is 175%
above what Outperformers in customer-focused and operationsfocused groups report. This suggests that product-focused
Outperformers are confident they’ve reached a degree ofmaturity in foundational technologies, and are therefore more apt
and willing to lean into emerging technologies as the next lever ofdifferentiation.

Essential lessons | 39

One eye-popping distinction between product-focused
Outperformers and Underperformers: their expectations aroundthe remote anywhere workplace. For Underperformers, thisis cited by CEOs as a middling challenge—above items suchas cash flow, but below topics such as raising capital. For
Outperformers, though, managing a remote workforce is among
the very top challenges, cited by CEOs in this group nearly twice
as often as their Underperformer peers.
What this reflects is a dichotomy in expectations about—andperhaps appreciation for—how remote or hybrid work might
disrupt the key human-to-human creativity that drives
innovation. “This year,” says Johnson & Johnson’s Alex Gorsky,“you could succeed on the capital that you established overyears of investing in corporate culture and innovation. Ourconcern is, what’s the half-life? How long before that fades?”The challenge these CEOs see is indeed acute. As Gorsky notes,“If you don’t have that physician and engineer shoulder toshoulder, are you going to have the same innovative output on
your next digital robotics platform?”
But within challenge lies opportunity. C.K. Venkataraman of
Titan Company observes, “COVID came and forced us to workfrom home. Digitally working together was adopted in a hugeway, including doing customer meetings digitally, franchisee
meetings digitally, we were doing all kinds of reviews digitally.
This new way of working—with so much emphasis on innovation,piloting, closure—became a big way of life, including new levelsof energy, engagement, and even the democratizing of talent.”

Chapter 3. Essential lessons

Three essential questions forthe product-focused organization
Are we prioritizing spare capacity
in our supply chain?
– What actions are we taking to help ensure our supply chain
continues to function productively during future disruptions?
– Where are the bottlenecks we need to address?
– How are we engaging our partners to build capacity
and resilience?
Is our marketing effort masking
product weakness?
– How are we differentiating our products and services
with compelling value for customers?
– What actions will make our products and services “sticky?”– What future disruptions could compromise the value our
products and services delivery and how are we preparing
for those scenarios?
Are we tracking how remote work
is impacting creativity?
– In what ways are we promoting cross-functional exchanges
and innovation across a hybrid workforce?
– How are we redefining how we measure innovationand creativity?
– What new leadership behaviors initiated in 2020 will
we retain?

40 | Essential lessons

Essential lessons in operations focus:
The experimentation mindset
The last group identified by the IBV’s segmentation analysis,covering some 20% of the 3,000 CEOs, are respondents whose
most important business priorities revolve around operations.
In the context of COVID-19, this is the group hit hardest during2020. Among even the Outperformers in this cohort, 60%
report expected revenue declines for the year, a figure twice
the size of Outperformers in the customer- and productfocused groups.
But despite those difficulties, the operations-focused
Outperformers demonstrate some key differentiation from
Underperformers—valuable distinctions that any organization
can learn from.
Overall, operators stress efficiency, distribution, pricing
structure, and transparency—all expected and appropriate
disciplines. The surprises with this group come, again,
when comparing its Outperformers and Underperformers.
Operations-focused laggards are taking the short view, citing
budgets, for example, as one of the most important external
forces impacting the enterprise in the future. But their leading
peers take a more proactive, forward-looking perspective,
positioning themselves for a prosperous tomorrow byemphasizing factors such as emerging technologies. It’s
the difference between surviving and thriving.

“We’re trying to accelerate
investments in theintangible world. How doyou generate value?”Mark Little, CEO, Suncor

Essential lessons | 41

Perhaps unsurprisingly, process automation is identified as
an expected driver of results, as well as cloud computing andAI (see Figure 19). “Trustworthy data can be of great value,”says Guo Jian, Vice CEO of COFCO Trading Agriculture Bigdata& Solutions Co., Ltd., part of China’s largest grain trading
and logistics company. “With the development of China’s
information technology, we’re providing new services for
agriculture and farmers.”
Technology will drive improving business agility, say theoperations-focused CEOs. This gets to a core challenge that
Outperforming CEOs recognize is of utmost importance toaddress.
“Shifting the mindset from engineering something to death toexperimenting and failing quickly is the opposite of the way
we’ve worked culturally,” says Mark Little of Suncor. “It’s a very
different approach.” Much of the solution, Little says, revolves
around technology and the proper approach to implementing
it: “We’re trying to accelerate investments in the intangible
world. How do you generate value?”

Figure 19

Great
expectations

Almost two-thirds of operations-focused
Outperformers placed robotic process
automation a firm fourth in terms of
expected performance, right behind theusual trio of IoT, cloud, and AI.

Top technologies in next 2-3 years
Internetof Things

Cloud
computing

Artificial
intelligence

87%

86%

75%

Robotic process
automation

Robotics

Advancedanalytics

65%

36%

Q. Which of the above technologies will most help deliver
the results you need over the next 2-3 years?

22%

42 | Essential lessons

Figure 20

In partnerships
we trust

Building ecosystems and partners isthe top action operations-focused
Outperformers will take to meetcustomer expectations, but it’s thelowest priority for Underperformers.
Operations-focused
Outperformers

Operations-focused
Underperformers

Build new ecosystems
and partnerships

48%

1

1

55%

Improve datatransparency

45%

2

2

51%

Strengthen data security
and privacy

41%

3

3

42%

Restructure supply chains
toward localization

31%

4

4

39%

Build new contactless businessmodels and touch points

29%

5

5

33%

Increase customer co-creationof products and touch points

25%

6

6

29%

Develop new businessplatforms

23%

7

7

28%

Improve personalization
capabilities

18%

8

8

24%

Q. How will you build customer experience and trust to
meet expectations over the next 2-3 years?

“If I work with partners, then I
can be successful faster. And I
don’t have to have every
competency on board here.”Franz Reiner, CEO, Daimler Mobility

A second critical differentiator among operations-focused
Outperformers: partnerships. Outperformers designate
partners and ecosystems as a key tool at double the level ofUnderperformers. In fact, when identifying ways to build trustwith customers and meet expectations, Outperformers rank
partnerships as first on their list among eight choices; for
Underperformers, it ranks dead last, at eighth (see Figure 20).

Essential lessons | 43

Even amid the darkest pandemic-disrupted moments, operations-focused Outperformers stuck with partners, responding
to a challenging economy by renegotiating partnerships 44%
more than Underperformers. “If I work with partners, then I
can be successful faster,” Daimler Mobility’s Franz Reinersays simply, explaining his organization’s commitment and thepriority of open innovation. “And I don’t have to have every
competency on board here.”
Another critical area of differentiation among operators:
sustainability. Outperformers rate sustainability among theirhighest priorities for the next two to three years, 32% morethan Underperformers. As they emphasize not just surviving
but thriving, operations-focused Outperformers see both
opportunity and risk mitigation in sustainability. Given thecritical importance of sustainability worldwide, the IBV will
publish new research in this area later in 2021.
Two final areas of differentiation in this operations-focusedgroup: employee engagement and customer engagement.
Outperformers stress purpose and mission in employee
engagement at an 83% higher frequency than Underperformers. During the steepest difficulties of 2020, they
were also more prone to pulling back on employee benefits,
while Underperformers were more likely to opt for layoffs andfurloughs (see Figure 21). By keeping engagement and capacity
higher, operations-focused Outperformers were positioned toaccelerate as conditions rebounded.

Figure 21

Decisions
under duress

Both operations-focused
Outperformers andUnderperformers most oftenchose to retain employeeswith reduced benefits.

Operations-focused
Outperformers
Operations-focused
Underperformers
Reduce employee
pay/benefits

63%
46%

Renegotiate
partnerships

49%
34%

Furlough/lay off
employees

34%
43%

Restructure yourorganization

24%
34%

Withdraw frommarkets

17%
28%

Abandoninvestments

10%
32%

Q. What are the most difficult decisions you have had tomake over the past 6 months (Q2-Q3 2020)?

44 | Essential lessons

Even amid the darkest pandemicdisrupted moments, operations-focused
Outperformers stuck with partners.

Chapter 3. Essential lessons

Three essential questions forthe operations-focused organization
Are we proactively exploring
emerging technologies?

As for customer engagement, the operations-focused
Outperformers echo the perspective of the customerfocused segment mentioned earlier: a primary emphasis
on customer experience, while Underperformers lean into
customer insights. In other words, the top operators conduct
themselves with a similarly mature, sophisticated customer
bent as customer-focused Outperformer organizations.

– What specific actions are we taking to explore thebenefits of emerging technologies?
– What capabilities would deliver the greatest value
for our organization?
– How are we positioning ourselves to seize firstor early-mover advantages?
Is sustainability core
to our strategy?
– Where are the greatest opportunities for our organization
to benefit from increased sustainability?
– How will we articulate the value of sustainability inour business strategy?
– How can sustainability serve as a differentiatorwith partners and customers?
Are we building long-term trustwith our employees?
– How are we positioning our organization and our workto earn the long-term trust of our employees?
– What actions are we taking to instill employees with asense of purpose?
– How are we measuring the value of employee engagement
as a driver of customer engagement?

Essential lessons | 45

Perspective

Startup advice
in a perfect world…

Q. Which of the above technologies will mo
the results you need over the next 2-3 year

Entrepreneurs have always found opportunity in difficult
environments. Even the earliest days of IBM, more than a century
ago, came in the middle of a two-year-long panic. So where would
CEOs choose to start a business now, in what industry, and using
what technology? The IBV asked its 3,000 respondents, and theresults were intriguing.18
The top-cited location for starting a new business was India,
followed by China in the second spot. This reflects the growthpotential in those economies and the still-open paths for scaling
presented by their huge domestic markets. The third most-citedcountry, surprisingly, was Italy, with the US in the fourth spot.
Singapore ranked a distant fifth and was followed closely byGermany, Brazil, and Japan.

The top-cited industries: financial services (known for historicallyhigh margins), retail, manufacturing, consumer products, andhealthcare. All are areas where a tech-infused newcomer might
have advantages over incumbents.
As for the five technologies that CEOs say are most important inenabling new businesses? They’re AI, robotics, IoT, augmented
reality/virtual reality, and cloud, with almost 75% of CEOs
identifying at least one of these essential building blocks.
Does this mean that an AI-based financial services business inIndia would be the best bet—the most successful new startup at
the moment? Only time and high-level execution will tell.

45

46 | Action guide

Action guide

Essential truths
The urgent question facing CEOs today:
what will it take to be essential—tocustomers, employees, communities,
and investors? To help you find youressential, our action guide takes a deep
dive into five questions.

Standing still has never been an option for executives, and theevents of the past year have amplified that truth. CEOs of all
stripes recognize that reality, whether by choice or by pressure.
The pandemic spurred urgency, but which organizations will
persist in operating at that speed? “The big challenge,” says
Daimler Mobility’s Franz Reiner, “will be to carry thismomentum forward. To continue with a clear focus on the most
relevant projects, with a clear mindset to implement those more
quickly. We have to be careful not to fall back into old habits.”
When it comes to a crisis, the word “survival” is limiting.
Organizations can’t just stay the same and endure; they needto reshape themselves for the future. Even the oft-cited word
“resilience” could describe bending in the wind—and thensimply snapping back to the status quo, with no ground gained.
That may be the safest course, but it’s not the most forwardfocused. And it may not be enough to navigate future
disruptions. “We need to gamble a lot,” says Mohammed Shael,
CEO of Corporate Strategic Affairs Sector, Dubai Department of
Economic Development. “We need to take high risks. We neednot believe that what was created 20 years ago is valid today.”
The future requires a different approach. It involves focus on
customer experience, an empowered hybrid workforce, and a
new kind of leadership: a “design leadership” approach that is
empathetic, sensing, and strategic. It combines human-centric
design with service and product excellence as a key driver ofdifferentiation. This will help organizations move toward
becoming a “virtual enterprise,” using interconnected
technology across the organization that enables operation
through disruptions, empowers engaged employees, andresults in loyal customers.

Essential truths | 47

Barri Rafferty, former CEO of Ketchum and now Executive
Vice President at Wells Fargo, believes differentiation will comefrom a combination of digital and in-person capabilities from anorganization’s leaders. She has seen COVID bring out more
empathy and a change in tone among CEOs and otherexecutives. “We’ve fallen into having so much online this year,
but we’re craving experiences,” Rafferty says. “When I lookahead, I wonder how we capture that technology transformation and agility—we found companies could move quicker
and do things we didn’t think we could do on a large scale—andmarry that with the caring and empathy and experiences people
want and are craving again.”

What is our essential technology?
From IoT to cloud computing and AI, digital maturity has
shown itself to be a powerful performance differentiator. As welearned during 2020, sometimes the hard way, having capability
in place beforehand matters. Yet Underperformers still underprioritize AI. Openness to new exponential technologies canoffer competitive advantages, as we encounter future problems
and opportunities that we didn’t know existed. Adoption is hard
and takes time. Reflect on our organization’s ability to embrace
new technologies effectively and at speed. Finally, how can webe proactive in anticipating the next rapidly approaching
revolution in computing: the advent of quantum?

To thrive in the years ahead, CEOs should continually examine
five questions that help them find their essential.

Who is our essential workforce?
The global embrace of remote work has reset expectations,choices, and cultures. “What might have taken 10 years all
happened within six months,” observes National Australia
Bank’s Ross McEwan. How each organization balancesin-person and virtual work will impact cost structure, productdevelopment, leadership requirements, and culture. As Piyush
Gupta of DBS Bank puts it, “With remote working, you need tokeep the soul of the company alive.”

What is our essential strategy?
“If we cannot be best in class in everything (however much wemight try), then we must zero in on what we are ‘really good at,’”as AT&T Communications’ Jeff McElfresh puts it. Where will ourorganization’s special advantages provide outsized value?
Where do we need to be competent but not expend resourceson trying to outperform? How can partnerships and ecosystems
amplify our efforts most efficiently? Open innovation andcollaboration provide a way forward, offering access to broader
ideas, talent, and opportunity than ivory tower approaches
can match.

48 | Essential truths

Who are our essential leaders?
The role of corporate leaders has become even more complex,
at the top and at every level down. Financial acumen must be
married to human connection. Communication skill requirements have been adjusted and amplified. Mission and purpose,social action, and community awareness are at a premium.
Broader, flatter structures, with more fluid decision making—and more reliance on technology for every piece of theenterprise—impact training, promotion, and talent management
across the board.
What are our essential risks?
Trouble will come, as 2020 taught so painfully. Preparedness isa long-term cost, and it is ignored at existential peril. Supply
chain vulnerability was exposed. Cyber risk and data security
loom, often under-addressed, as organizations become
more technologically mature. Underperformers in particularunderappreciate the need for cybersecurity mastery. Yetcybersecurity needs to be embedded throughout strategy andaligned with partners. Once risks are acknowledged, planned
for, and addressed, long-term opportunities can be aggressively
pursued and value can then be realized. Shifting toward
zero-trust security across partner and customer ecosystems
enables secure interactions, workflows, and innovation.19 These
may all be the most important sources of value going forward.

“We cannot play defense indefinitely,” says Calin Rovinescu
of Air Canada, whose industry felt the teeth of COVID-19
more than most. “We have to start playing offense. It’s
picking spots and investing in the crux of what we’re trying todo.” For Air Canada, that’s taken the form of launching a new
loyalty program, buying a struggling leisure airline, andshifting resources to transport cargo. Other enterprises
answer the questions of 2020 by pushing to acquire different
skills: “We’ve been building some muscle in the organization
to be better at partnering,” says Ross McEwan of National
Australia Bank. “Because we can’t do everything ourselves.
We don’t want to.”Finding your essential—the sharp edge of the knife for yourenterprise—this is your priority. Transformation is nevercomplete, especially for an ambitious company committed to
avoiding complacency and any self-delusion that its market
position is automatically secure. “You are not going to be
perfect,” says Fernando González of CEMEX. “Part of theinvestment is not going to pay off. But it doesn’t matter.
You try to understand what is not working properly, youstop doing that, and you focus on what you think can really
pay off.”

49

Perspective
Customerfocused

And the winningmodel is…
A natural question arises when assessing this study’s threesegments: are Outperformers from a specific industry more likely
to align with a customer-focused, product-focused, or operationsfocused model?
Analyzing all 3,000 respondents across all industries, we foundthat nearly 50% of respondents lean toward a customer focus,
while 30% identify as product-focused and approximately 20%
as operations-focused. We then looked for distinctive patterns ofOutperformers within each industry and found that in 17 of the 26
industries studied (65%), the majority of Outperformers have opted
for one focus. In the other nine industries, there is not a clear
majority focus among the Outperformers—the results are mixed.
We then compared Outperformer focus preference with thepreference of others in their industry (see figure). In 10 industries,
we discovered that the majority of both Outperformers and allothers have the same focus. In 10 industries, Outperformers andall others diverge, either adhering to different areas of focus or aclear focus on one side and a “no majority focus” result on theother. Finally, in the six remaining industries, there are “no majority
focus” results on both sides.
Through additional analysis, we uncovered industry-specificOutperformer-focused insights that can help you further accelerate
your differentiation and value (even if you follow a contrarian
approach). You can find details and examples of our findings in theupcoming IBV CEO Study industry deep dives.

Agriculture
Automotive OEMs
Automotive suppliers
Chemicals
Consumer productsElectronics
Energy and utilities
Financial markets
Federal governmentState/local government
Healthcare payer
Healthcare provider
Higher education
Industrial products
IT services and consulting
Insurance
Life Sciences/Pharma
Manufacturing
Media and entertainment
MiningPetroleum
RetailRetail/business banking
Telecommunications
Transportation
Travel

Productfocused

Operations- No majority
focusedfocus

Primary choicePrimary choice

Outperformers

All others

50

Research and analysis methodology
The IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV), in cooperation with
Oxford Economics, interviewed 3,000 CEOs from nearly 50
countries and 26 industries. These interviews were conductedvirtually. In addition, through live video conferencing and phoneinterviews, and when safe, in-person meetings, the IBV
conducted deep-dive conversations with two dozen selectCEOs from 11 industries and 11 countries. These qualitativeand quantitative interviews focused on strategic businesspriorities; drivers of success; and challenges prior to COVID-19,
during COVID-19, and in a future post-pandemic economy.
Respondents in our study represent the most senior executiveroles at their organizations: CEOs, Public Leaders, General
Managers, and Managing Directors. The IBV designed datacollection by country and industry, as well as revenue growth or
decline prior to 2020 and during 2020 (including the COVID-19
pandemic) versus industry peers. Through these defining
mechanisms, the IBV was able to identify Outperformers andUnderperformers.
The IBV also implemented a segmentation logic that sorted
respondents into one of three groups. These segments havebeen defined as customer-focused, product-focused, andoperations-focused CEOs. Each of the three were based on
responses to specific items from the 2021 IBM CEO survey
instrument.

–

Customer focus is defined in terms of an organization’s
identification with a willingness to have customer participation as an element of “co-creation” in product design anddevelopment efforts; its innovation focus on customer
experience; its performance centered on customer
engagement; and its emphasis on the prominent use ofcustomer insights to define and mold organizational
capabilities.

–

Product focus is defined in terms of an organization’s desire
to deliver more innovation in products and services; its
determination to develop more reliable, secure, and individualized products; and its innovative focus concentrated on
product and service improvement.

–

Operations focus is defined in terms of an organization
placing high importance on the reduction of operationalcosts; its emphasis on enhancing operational agility andflexibility; its innovative focus on its developing businessmodels; and its demonstrated, strong participation incompleting a transformative digital journey.

Each responding organization in the 2021 IBM CEO data set
obtained a combined score for each of these three performanceaxes. Each assignment was made by determining its mostprominent axis. Performance ties were identified and treated asa special consideration and were not included in the by-axis
profiles.

51

The right partner fora changing world
At IBM, we collaborate with our clients, bringing
together business insight, advanced research, andtechnology to give them a distinct advantage in today’s
rapidly changing environment.

IBM Institute for Business ValueThe IBM Institute for Business Value, part of IBM
Services, develops fact-based, strategic insights forsenior business executives on critical public and private
sector issues.

For more information
To learn more about this study or the IBM Institute for
Business Value, please contact us at iibv@us.ibm.com.
Follow @IBMIBV on Twitter, and, for a full catalog of
our research or to subscribe to our monthly newsletter,
visit: ibm.com/ibv.

52

Notes and sources
1

Payraudeau, Jean-Stéphane, Anthony Marshall, and Jacob Dencik,
Ph.D. “Digital acceleration: Top technologies driving growth in a time ofcrisis.” IBM Institute for Business Value. November 2020.
https://ibm.co/digital-acceleration

2“COVID-19 and the future of business: Executive epiphanies reveal
post-pandemic opportunities.” IBM Institute for Business Value.
September 2020. https://ibm.co/covid-19-future-business

3

Payraudeau, Jean-Stéphane, Anthony Marshall, and Jacob Dencik,
Ph.D. “Digital acceleration: Top technologies driving growth in a time ofcrisis.” IBM Institute for Business Value. November 2020.
https://ibm.co/digital-acceleration

4“Unplug from the past: Chief Human Resources Officer insights fromthe 20th Edition of the Global C-suite Study.” IBM Institute for Business
Value. June 2018. https://www.ibm.com/thought-leadership/institutebusiness-value/c-suite-study/chro. Specific report available athttps://www.ibm.com/downloads/cas/D2KEJQRO

5“The Employee Experience Index: A new global measure of ahuman workplace and its impact.” IBM® Smarter Workforce Institute.
WorkHuman® Research Institute. July 2017. https://www.ibm.com/
downloads/cas/JDMXPMBM

6Petrone, Joe, Gillian Orrell, and Carolyn Heller Baird. “The value of
virtual agent technology: Improve customer service and boost financial
results with AI-enabled systems.” IBM Institute for Business Value.
October 2020. http://ibm.co/virtual-agent-technology

7

Payraudeau, Jean-Stéphane, Anthony Marshall, and Jacob Dencik,
Ph.D. “Digital acceleration: Top technologies driving growth in a time ofcrisis.” IBM Institute for Business Value. November 2020.
https://ibm.co/digital-acceleration

8

Ibid.

9

Ibid.

10 “The quantum decade: Preparing for the next computing
revolution.” Infographic. IBM Institute for Business Value. 2021.
https://www.ibm.com/downloads/cas/Q5Q8ZOWR
11 Wright, Amy, Diane Gherson, Josh Bersin, and Janet Mertens.
“Accelerating the journey to HR 3.0: Ten ways to transform in a timeof upheaval.” IBM Institute for Business Value in collaboration with
the Josh Bersin Academy. Unpublished study data. October 2020.
http://ibm.co/hr-3
12 “Closing the chasm.” IBM Institute for Business Value. October 2020.
http://ibm.co/closing-chasm
13 LaPrade, Annette, Janet Mertens, Tanya Moore, and Amy Wright.
“The enterprise guide to closing the skills gap: Strategies for building
and maintaining a skilled workforce.” IBM Institute for Business Value.
September 2019. https://ibm.co/closing-skills-gap
14 Payraudeau, Jean-Stéphane, Anthony Marshall, and Jacob Dencik,
Ph.D. “Digital acceleration: Top technologies driving growth in a time ofcrisis.” IBM Institute for Business Value. November 2020.
https://ibm.co/digital-acceleration
15 LaPrade, Annette, Janet Mertens, Tanya Moore, and Amy Wright. “Theenterprise guide to closing the skills gap: Strategies for building andmaintaining a skilled workforce.” IBM Institute for Business Value.
September 2019. https://ibm.co/closing-skills-gap
16 “Build Your Trust Advantage: Leadership in the era of data and AI
everywhere.” Global C-suite Study 20th Edition. IBM Institute for
Business Value. November 2019. https://www.ibm.com/thoughtleadership/institute-business-value/c-suite-study
17 Mantas, Jesus and Cindy Anderson. “Untapped potential: The Hispanic
talent advantage.” IBM Institute for Business Value in collaboration withWe Are All Human. December 2020. https://ibm.co/hispanic-talentadvantage
18 “Think like a CEO.” Infographic. IBM Institute for Business Value.
December 2020. https://www.ibm.com/downloads/cas/3EWYO1JQ
19 “A zero trust strategy needs context-based security.” IBM Security.
Accessed January 12, 2021. https://www.ibm.com/security/zero-trust© Copyright IBM Corporation 2021
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