By Robert DeMarzo Published on The Channelco
Learn more about MES Spring 2019 keynote speaker Charles Araujo as he answers questions from The Channel Company senior vice president of event content and strategy Robert DeMarzo.
Araujo is a keynote speaker for our upcoming Midsize Enterprise Summit event, which takes place May 5-7 in Orlando. Araujo recently answered a series of questions about his keynote and the importance of digital transformation.
You are delivering a keynote at the upcoming MES Conference on unleashing creativity and innovation. What makes this such a critical time to discuss this message to midmarket CIOs?
My tennis coach used to tell me that the middle was no man’s land. That you either played at the net or at the baseline, but never from the middle of the court. I find that this is true in a lot of areas of life — playing in the middle is often a losing proposition. This is starting to become true as well for the entire mid-market as we enter the Digital Era. On the one hand, you have large enterprises that have resources to invest and treasure troves of data to work from, and an entire generation of digital-native startups on the other ready to disrupt every market sector. The challenge for mid-market CIOs in this environment is to overcome this squeeze and, instead, leverage this environment and the changes taking place to their advantage. That will demand that they unleash the creativity and innovation within their organizations.