‘IT-business alignment is a horrible phrase’

For years, everyone's been preaching the same gospel: IT needs to work better with the business in order to succeed and be considered a valuable asset to the company. This has been characterised as “alignment,” which conjures images of two trains, IT and business, running in parallel tracks or (better yet) on the same track, with IT in the lead.Ajei Gopal will have none of that. The CA exec recently spoke to me at an invite-only event for CIOs that was held in Muskoka, Ont. (a beautiful resort called the Rousseau, which, unfortunately, I saw little of since we were in a windowless room all afternoon).Here's a clip of Gopal discussing his rationale for moving past the alignment idea and how IT executives can move towards “practical innovation.” Runs about five minutes.