We Are All Technology Companies Now Marc FronsCIO, The New York Times@marcfrons

‘The thing I have learned at IBM is that

culture is everything’

– Lou Gerstner, Chairman & CEO of IBM from 1993 until 2002.

What Kind of Company do You

Work For?

Some Traditional Attitudes About Tech Departments

A cost center

Purely a service organization

Something to be offshored or otherwise outsourced

Something you buy from outside vendors, not have your own team build

Internet technology is inseparable from the creative aspects of the medium itself

Should we put

the engineers in charge?

A Media Company AND

a Technology Company

The State of NYT Digital 8 Years Ago

Less than 20 engineers

Separated from the company & print newspaper

Worked in a separate physical location

Little interaction with newsroom

Hack Days

Monthly, on Fridays

Internal AND external

participants

Pick whatever you want to

work on

Hack together with journalists,

engineers

Present to the group

NYTimes Chrome App: Times Skimmer

100% Days

Times Open

Times-hosted

monthly technology

forum

Agile Development

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/05/25/sunday-review/corporate-taxes.html?ref=sunday

Build, Not Buy

The Advantages of Building

Product Differentiation – no more ‘me too’ solutions

Vertical integration -- reduces complexity, and makes a coherent customer data strategy easier to achieve

Allows for more flexible and iterative solutions

Competitive advantage over companies without strong tech teams

Attract and retain top tech talent

Makes your team better able to evaluate vendors when a 3rd party solution makes sense

A great Tech team raises the bar

for product managers

If you want to innovate…

Technologists need to be peers with other creative and business leaders in your company Technology is not just a service organization

Build, don’t buy strategic technology that is core to your business and where success is based on rapid innovation

Own your data And make sure you can store, analyze, visualize, and act on

the insights

Embrace new development processes such as continuous delivery that stress iteration and automation

Empower product managers who understand technology and think in terms of strategic capabilities, not one-off solutions

Thank You