Digital leadership used to be about building the best library. We curated the "best-of-breed" books, organised the shelves, and made sure the lights stayed on. But the library was quiet. It waited for someone to walk in and ask a question.
That era is over.
As we look toward our upcoming CIONET sessions, a single, urgent theme connects the dots: we are moving from systems of record to systems of action. We are no longer just building libraries; we are building the librarians. To get there, we must follow a deliberate path of architectural and operational evolution.
Our journey begins with the Composable Enterprise. The old, monolithic way of building businesses is too brittle for the speed of the 2020s. To be "composable" is to be modular, ensuring that business capabilities can be swapped, scaled, and reassembled at will. Before we can talk about intelligence, we must talk about fluidity. If your architecture cannot pivot, your AI will simply help you fail faster.
Once the foundations are modular, we must address the clutter. At Les Rencontres, we will tackle Vendor Detox and the shift toward Platformisation. This isn't just about saving license costs; it’s about architectural sanity. For years, we chased the "best" tool for every niche, resulting in a fragmented mess of data silos. Now, the tide has turned. To fuel modern AI, we need the cohesion that only platforms provide. We are choosing integration over isolation.
This technical evolution sets the stage for CIOFEST and Leadership in the Agentic Era. This isn't just "AI version 2.0." It is a fundamental shift in the mandate of the CIO. We are moving from managing software that assists to leading agents that act. These autonomous systems will negotiate, procure, and decide. This requires a new kind of leadership, one that governs outcomes and ethics rather than just uptime and tickets.
The thread is clear. To lead in an AI-dominated world, we must modularise our processes (Composable), simplify our estates (Detox), and finally, redefine our roles (Agentic Leadership).
We aren't just upgrading our tech stacks; we are redesigning the very operating model of the Belgian enterprise. I look forward to debating how we get there… together.