When you’re the CIO overseeing 5,000 IT staff around the world, there’s a lot on your shoulders. That’s the position Christopher Peretta of State Street Corp., which provides financial services to institutional investors, finds himself in.
That’s why you might find this interview with Mary K. Pratt worth reading, where Peretta talks about receiving an MIT Sloan award for CIO leadership earlier this year.
State Street has 29,000 staff in 29 countries around the world, with US$23.4 trillion in assets under custody and administration. Technology, Peretta has said, is at the heart of everything the company does, accounting for up to 25 per cent of operating expenses
What I found interesting are his thoughts on encouraging innovation. “I always tell my head of architecture he has to be three or four years out for me,” he said, “because those are the kind of horizons the business uses.”
It begs the question how far ahead do you look?
