A generational shift is occurring in U.S. enterprise "C" title ranks, but one trend already is clear: the Internet has become the top information resource. Some 81 percent of respondents 50 or younger are on the Internet daily while 62 percent of executives older than that did so.
Also, most C-title executives at firms making more than $1 billion in annual revenue have shifted their information-gthering strategies away from traditional media and to Internet-based media.
When consuming "traditional media" at work, 70 percent of respondents say they get that information online. When consuming "traditional broadcast media" at work, 69 percent use the Internet.
C-suite executives do their own searches. That is a sharp break from the way most such executives probably worked decades ago, when "middle managers" gathered information and passed it up to the C suites. These days, the C suite knows it can get information directly, and does so.
Also, video and social communities are growing in importance, the survey reveals. About 33 percent of 50-and-under executives view work-related videos "daily," while 31 percent use a Web-enabled mobile device to search for information related to business.
The mean age of all executives taking this survey was 46.7 years. But there remains one glaring exception to the trend: only one percent of those over the age of 50 provide daily contributions to a work-related blog. Another four percent in this age group say they contribute several times a week, the Forbes Insights study found.
In contrast, 35 percent of executives ages 40 to 49 say they maintain a work-related blog daily. That figure increases to 56 percent of the executives under the age of 40.
That probably matches what you would have guessed: younger and "middle-aged" people have gotten comfortable with the new technologies while older people tend to resist. That same pattern was found for computer use, Internet use or email in the ealier days as well.
Overall, about three percent of surveyed executives over 50 participate in Twitter or another microblog. In contrast, 34 percent of the executives ages 40 to 49 participate. Among users under the age of 40, 56 percent of the executives under 40 participate.
The top three research topics that C-level executives seek are competitor analysis (53 percent), customer trends (41 percent), and corporate developments (39 percent).
Of those executives in sales and marketing, 76 percent say they seek customer trends. Of those executives in finance, 63 percent said they seek competitor analysis. Of those executives in IT, 59 percent seek technology trends.
The study, "The Rise of the Digital C-Suite," is based on a survey of 354 executives at U.S. companies with annual sales in excess of $1 billion. It also included one-on-interviews. Nearly half held C-level titles, such as CEO, CMO, and CIO; the others held senior-level titles, such as EVP, VP, and director. A total of 12 percent identified themselves as working in sales and marketing.
No comments:
Post a Comment