What Should Cisco CTO Talk About?

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In a previous blog post I flamed Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior's content-free presentation at VoiceCon. In this post, I explore an outline of what she SHOULD have presented.

First of all, nobody believes Cisco actually creates new technology. With only three exceptions (routers, telepresence and the unified computing server) in its enormous product line, Cisco's product revenues have acrued significantly from its innate ability to spot emerging technologies, acquire the leading vendors just as they're about to cross Jeffrey Moore's chasm, assimilate their engineering team and products and then propel them through the famous Cisco sales channels to add several zeros to the revenue profile of the new product category.

Warrior should have acknowledged these realities and then talked about how Cisco plans to take this innovation model to new markets and new product categories, IF in fact that is the grand plan of Cisco. If that's not the grand plan, she should instead focus on the innovation model the company would like to create and talk about examples of that.

Demonstrating product, or near-product, frankly, is not really becoming of a CTO's keynote. She should have left this script to John Chambers or any of his dozens of direct reports who are better skilled at sales. Padmasree, if this is your idea of a CTO keynote, you should change your title to Master of Ceremony. But in doing so you may need to watch out, I hear Bob Saggett is looking for his next gig, and this could be it!