Craig Weber

Much work remains to reconcile insurers' digital vision with the digital reality that seems to be arriving for other industries.

Why do 25 percent of CEOs, 65 percent of CFOs, 39 percent of COOs, and 41 percent of line of business heads not buy into the need for innovation?

A good number of C-suite execs say innovation is important, but they expect it to happen organically, as part of normal operations, according to Celent research.

Though the core systems technologies and services may have reached critical mass in terms of supporting creative disruption, there's always room to ask: What if...?

The user experience is changing for the better, in both subtle and dramatic ways.

Without talking to my "friends" directly, I have no way of knowing why they clicked on the Like button, rendering an analytical tool of questionable value even further devalued.

It pains me to have regular conversations with industry participants of all persuasions where we all agree that there is room for two big industry shows a year, but not within weeks of each other.

Core systems renewal and improving the customer experience help optimism hold the lead over pessimism.

Amazon's recent snafu resulting in outages among its EC2 customers' sites raises the question of how insurers should steel themselves for such a situation?

While many vendor calls to insurance execs aren't immediately valuable, maintaining an inward-facing world view and ignoring what's happening in the industry can be detrimental.

Despite the economy's negative effect on insurers' IT strategies, there are a few "new normal" factors in play that may provide balance.

The concerns of Japanese insurers are very similar to those of their North American counterparts.

Breaking business process problems down into components to be digested by groups of three people can save insurers significant amounts of time.

If the insurance industry truly designed technology to meet user needs and expectations, it could avoid a lot of pain and effort by leveraging existing user behaviors.

Insurers that tie themselves to major sporting events build brand by capturing eyeballs in an innovative way, not by trying to be "cute" with their sponsorships.

From gathering intelligence to problem solving to making IT decisions, a CIOs job always is varied and busy.