As technology becomes more accessible through mediums beyond IT's control, you have but one choice: Get proactive by empowering employees, or swim against the current. Successful BT leaders will react not by blocking access but by lending their expertise to increase the chances of technology success and empowering the users to solve customer and business problems. This year's IT Forum will provide a blueprint for reaping the benefits of your empowered organization -- complete with case studies, methodologies, and step-by-step advice tailored to each IT role.

IT leaders have long struggled to deliver business and technology alignment.  But alignment implies a waterfall process: decide on a business strategy, and then build your technology on that foundation.  Today, our businesses move too fast for the traditional IT model - instead, Business Technology leaders must join the leaders of their lines of business to create business and technology strategy simultaneously.  That means working with new business partners inside and outside your organization, operationalizing innovation through standards, and above all, saying, "yes, and..." instead of "yes, but..."  This year, we'll dedicate IT Forum to building bridges to new business partners, scaling innovative solutions, and co-creating business and technology strategy.

Today's empowered employees and customers provision themselves with a multitude of tools and technologies.  But it's ruthless standardization of the underlying technologies and processes that have made his flood of customer-driven and customer-created innovation possible.  And sustaining that rate of innovation and growth will require the next phase of standardization - industrialization.  This year, we'll devote IT Forum to planning, designing, and operating your business technology to industrial standards.