It’s Time for the CIO 2.0

Here’s what’s not happening in most orgs:
No one’s asking “Who owns AI?”
They’re skipping even that.

What I hear is:

“We need AI. Let’s hire someone. Bring in a chatbot. Buy a copilot. See what sticks.”

There’s no real strategy.
No clarity on what problems AI is even meant to solve.
Just a vague mandate from the top, handed off to consultants or IT, hoping something smart will happen.

The Real Miss? No One Owns Intelligence

Lately I’ve been working on AI workflows that blend human discernment with machine reasoning — not just automating tasks, but reshaping how insight flows across a system.

And it’s shown me something deeper:
AI isn’t the hard part.
Owning intelligence is.

We have models. We have tools.
But we don’t have roles that steward the full continuum of how an organization thinks, learns, and acts on signal.

It’s a Strategy Play, Not a Tech Play

I sat down with a friend today who’s seeing the same thing:
Executives chasing AI without understanding their own business capabilities.
No inventory. No mapping. No discernment.

“How can we use AI?” is not a real question.
A real question is:
Which of our capabilities could benefit from intelligent systems — and how do we redesign them?

That’s not an IT decision.
That’s not a pilot experiment.
That’s strategy — and someone has to own it at the top.

Intelligence Is the New Infrastructure

We’ve seen this pattern before:

• Marketing became digital → enter the CMO
• Data became strategic → enter the CDO
• Tech became product → enter the CTO/CDiO

Now intelligence — not just data — is becoming the backbone of how work happens:

• LLMs are reshaping how we interface with knowledge
• Reflexive systems are surfacing feedback loops in real time
• Organizational memory is being rebuilt on generative tools

But still:
No one owns the full stack of how intelligence is captured, modeled, and upgraded.

Enter the Chief Intelligence Officer

This isn’t just a technical role.
It’s a missing executive function — someone who:

• Understands the core business capability map
• Can identify which domains are ripe for intelligent augmentation
• Bridges strategy, functional need, and enabling tech
• Stewards how human reasoning and machine insight reinforce each other

The CIO 2.0 doesn’t “own AI.”
They own the integrity of organizational intelligence.

Are You Intelligence-Ready?

Ask yourself:

• Do you have AI pilots… but no coherent upgrade path?
• Do different teams run disconnected tools with no shared insight layer?
• Is there a gap between what’s automated and what’s actually being learned?

If so, you don’t have a tooling problem.
You have an intelligence ownership problem.

What Comes Next

In the coming weeks, I’ll be publishing:

• A working role charter for the Chief Intelligence Officer (CIO 2.0)
• A capability-first toolkit for assessing your signal stack
• Field notes from building intelligence systems across org layers

Until then:
Start asking real questions.
And start thinking about who owns how your organization thinks.

Up next: CIO 2.0 Role Charter — coming right up.