Listen "CISO on Top Management Teams (Gao, Wattal, & Thatcher 2025) | FT50 ISR"
Episode Synopsis
English Podcast Start at 00:00:00Bengali Podcast Start at 00:19:36Hindi Podcast Start at 00:42:43Revise and Resubmit 🎙️ Welcome back, scholars, builders, and curious minds! Pull up a chair, pop open your notes, and say hello in the chat 👋Today we spotlight a prestigious FT50 journal gem from Information Systems Research, published by INFORMS. Fresh off the press on August 19, 2025, this study asks a bold question and answers it with data from S&P 1500 firms: Chief Information Security Officers on Top Management Teams—do they stifle creativity or spark it?Once, the CISO was the person who said no. Then breaches multiplied. Boards shifted. The org chart changed. The CISO pulled up a chair at the TMT. And something unexpected happened. Innovation didn’t slow. It sped up. Fast. 🚀Here’s the cadence of why:🔐 Less preventable risk, fewer derailments. When blockers vanish, experiments run.☁️📊 Faster adoption of innovation enablers with strategic security risk—cloud, big data, modern stacks—because someone can carry the risk backpack.🛡️ Stronger security controls to protect IP, so ideas survive the sprint and the scale.And here’s the kicker: experience matters. CISOs with industry-specialized backgrounds or prior executive roles amplify the innovation lift. The seat is important. The person in the seat is decisive. 🧠💡So if you’re a CEO, a board member, or a strategist, this isn’t just org design—it’s value creation through security risk management. If you’re a researcher, it’s a clean causal story with practical levers. If you’re in the chat, tell us: what would your firm innovate tomorrow if the security path was clear today? ✍️Before we dive deep, do two quick things:Tap follow on Revise and Resubmit on Spotify 🎧Subscribe to our YouTube channel Weekend Researcher ▶️We’re also available on Amazon Prime and Apple Podcasts. Share the episode, drop your take in the chat, and help the research reach the people who build.Paper: “Chief Information Security Officers on Top Management Teams: Impact on Firms’ Innovation”Authors: Yiwen Gao, Sunil Wattal, and Jason ThatcherJournal: Information Systems Research (FT50, highly prestigious), published by INFORMSPublished online: August 19, 2025Curious question to carry into the episode: if adding a CISO to the TMT measurably boosts innovation, which other “defensive” roles—risk, compliance, audit—belong at the innovation table next, and how would we know?Big thanks to the authors, Yiwen Gao, Sunil Wattal, and Jason Thatcher, and to the publisher, INFORMS, for this important contribution. 🙏ReferenceGao, Y., Sunil Wattal, & Thatcher, J. (2025). Chief Information Security Officers on Top Management Teams: Impact on Firms’ Innovation. Information Systems Research. https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2023.0197Youtube Channelhttps://www.youtube.com/@weekendresearcherSupport us on Patreonhttps://patreon.com/weekendresearcher
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