IBM Global CEO Study: CEOs battle to keep up with the pace of change

06 May 2008

  Mumbai: The largest study of chief executives, IBM Global CEO Study, reveals a dramatic increase in the number of global business leaders who see important change ahead, and also highlights how the ability to absorb and manage change is widening the gap between winners and losers in the global economy.

Jim Bramante

CEOs reported a surprising level of optimism about change as an opportunity to build new competitive advantage. Of the CEOs surveyed, 83 per cent expect substantial changes in the future - an increase of 28 per cent in just two years. However, CEOs report their ability to effectively manage change is increasing at a far slower pace.

Collectively, CEOs set their organisation's ability to manage change 22 percentage points lower than their expectations for the level of change they will have to manage - a 'change gap' that is widening.

The respondents point specifically to their own customer base as the source of the most important changes they feel they will have to address, as two new and more demanding  classes of customers emerge - the 'information omnivore', and the 'socially-minded' customer.

Of all the trends identified in the study, surveyed CEOs plan their most substantial increases in investment in response to these customer sets.

Designed to capture insights on how the challenges that CEOs face today will impact the future of business, the IBM Global CEO Study, titled The Enterprise of the Future, was conducted by IBM Global Business Services in association with the Economist Intelligence Unit and its findings are based upon a series of interviews conducted by IBM in late 2007 and early 2008.