The Captain’s Lunch is an annual event hosted by ICT Media, bringing together executive leaders from technology partners to share insights on technology and innovation, network and further enhance partner ecosystems.
- Rob Beijleveld CEO & Owner ICT Media / Digital Knowledge Institute (DKI)
- Chris Heller Business and Operations Director ICT Media
- Erik Beulen Program Director Digital Knowledge Institute & Professor University of Manchester
Before Moving Forward
The needs of the public and the private sector are different, and both are collaborating to a large degree with technology partners. In this context there are two critical movements according Rob Beijleveld, CEO ICT Media/DKI.
First, any organisation needs to balance between growth and resilience. Setting strategies for achieving the right balance is critical.
Second there is a strong push on business outcomes, which is triggering two transformations:
- Transformation of the operating model
- Transformation of the tech stacks and the technology organisation.
These two critical movements are foundational for business ecosystem success. According Prof. Erik Beulen, to be able to handle the dynamics in business ecosystems, the ecosystems need to grow holistically by an incremental roadmap. Furthermore, organisations need to understand that technology decisions are increasingly made by business executives. This changes stakeholder management. Finally, co-creation initiates business ecosystems, and anticipating the outcomes of co-creation positions organisations to lead forthcoming business ecosystems.
Digital Knowledge Institute (DKI)
DKI is a community of tech leaders with a common goal: fostering the digital maturity of mid to large-size organizations. Transform their business smarter, better, and faster.
For the CIO and CISO community DKI provides a safe space to learn and network, as well as connect with technology partners. For 2026 DKI, led by Prof. Erik Beulen, defined six themes:
- Strategy & Purpose
- Technology Value Creation
- Innovation & Data
- Partners & Co-creation
- Target Operation Model (TOM), Change & Talent
- Governance & Risk
These themes set DKIs market research agenda. An example of current research projects is “scaling AI” in the executive AI Boardroom program with participating organisation such as Heineken, ING, Philips, Rituals and UWV. This three-year program is powered by Cognizant, Dell, Nvidia and EY. Furthermore, DKI currently executive research programs on cyber resilience and cloud strategies & transformation.
CIO and CISO perspective
Organisations are addressing challenges in their digital journeys. Aart Rupert, CDO of Damen, 2023 CIO of the Year and board member of CIO Platform Nederland (Dutch CIO Association) explains that being able to deliver value to their organisation, customers and employees is not always straight forward. In implementing the digital backbone, many organisations are not yet realising or harvesting the full value, while many CIOs are often directed to focus primarily on controlling IT spend. In addition, many organisations face a maturity gap between platform capabilities and organisational skills, as well as data quality issues, which might be resolved by AI. Finally, Aart Ruppert is looking for support from technology providers in addressing the increasing complex geopolitical environment.
Ronald Verbeek, Director of CIO Platform Nederland, concurs and advocates strengthening technology innovation by empowering tech teams and deepening collaboration with technology partners, with the aim of improving the flexibility of customers to adjust to international developments, based on interoperability and use of open standards.
Carlo Schreurs, CISO of FrieslandCampina and board member of CISO Platform Nederland (Dutch CISO Association), approaches resilience through what he calls four heartbeats: OT measured in decades, IT in years, AI evolving daily and quantum shaping decisions for generations. Few organisations are designed to manage these speeds at once.
He notes that AI strengthens defence while simultaneously lowering the threshold for large-scale attacks. In this environment, resilience is no longer a cybersecurity issue alone. It demands alignment across operations, technology and ecosystems, a point he illustrated with a story about a major supply chain cyber incident that indirectly impacted his organisation.
Gartner perspective
Frank Buytendijk, Chief of Research Gartner Futures Lab, emphasized the business need for a shared societal narrative. Globalization ceased to be that narrative, but Buytendijk positioned techno-centrism as the shared societal narrative. Techno-centrism, in the view of Gartner, consists of two worldviews: hypermachinity and hyperhumanity.
Hypermachinity is the idea that we create a better world for people if we take people out of the process, system or organization. Human-in-the-loop becomes human-on-the-loop. People doing more valuable work. With the workforce shrinking over the coming years, AI will not take jobs away, but will do work for which there are no people to fill those jobs.
Hyperhumanity seemingly is the opposite. This narrative is taking technology deeper into the human equation to enhance human capability and behaviour. This means architected humans, as well as improving mental, physical and neurological capabilities resulting in human performance ROI benefits. However, this narrative of integrating technologies is also highly contested and triggers ethical and societal debates. But both have something in common: rationality. But is a rational world also a better world?
The techno-centrism narrative has implications for technology providers. They need to be more deeply rooted in society, drive the societal narrative, must feel a deep responsibility and must engage beyond products and services. In short, technology providers must be less transactional and more engaged.
Sovereignty Reach Out
Last year DKI researched both data and operation sovereignty and concluded that the current sovereignty of most organisations is not meeting the required sovereignty levels to ensure business resilience. What is key for any organisation is understanding sovereignty dependencies. Organisations must accept that these dependencies cannot be resolved in the short term. However, we must begin taking concrete steps now to address, mitigate, and ultimately resolve these challenges over the long term.
Data sovereignty requires significant effort but is achievable and ensures compliance. Operational sovereignty is much harder and a more persistent threat to business resilience.
We cannot deny that sovereignty concerns dominate the public debate. We conclude sovereignty negatively impacts technology partners value creation and suggest collectively addressing sovereignty.
Call to Action – We offer facilitating a technology partners dialogue, followed by a joint dialogue with both technology partners and the broader business community.
