CIO 100 Leadership Live Chicago: CIOs Reassess AI Economics, Governance, and Leadership
CIO, Tuesday, October 20th, 2026
At CIO 100 Leadership Live Chicago, IT leaders discussed falling build costs, harder AI governance and proving transformation ROI to boards.
This report from CIO 100 Leadership Live Chicago on October 13 covers how AI is changing the economics of enterprise technology, as application development costs fall while autonomous systems make governance harder and traditional productivity measures struggle to capture AI returns for boards.
Culligan CIO Laura Walsh described pressure to speed up AI while proving returns and funding new work within existing budgets.
She stressed data governance, project execution and technology business management, and described a hub-and-spoke model with common AI controls.
Stack360 CEO Jamie Head urged CIOs to work with CEOs and CFOs on a short list of priorities and to defer the rest.