Stories about: GlaxoSmithKline

Writing about leadership feels a bit like writing about unicorns, those mythical creatures that have inspired fairy tales since ancient times. There is that same elusive, almost unattainable quality to everything related to leadership: describing it, finding it, developing it.

Ingo Elfering talks a lot about opportunities. That's not surprising, considering he has built his career on developing transformative uses for IT. In 1987 he founded his own company, MedicalData Service, which developed software for the medical community. SmithKline Beecham bought Elfering's company in 1997 and hired him as part of the deal. A native of Germany, he came to the U.S. with his wife in 2000 when a merger created GlaxoSmithKline. Last November, Elfering became vice president of business transformation for the company's Core Business Services. He now holds dual American and German citizenship and was named one of Computerworld's 2010 Premier 100 IT Leaders.

As CIO at Purdue Pharma LP, Larry Pickett likes to have his head in the cloud, and it's going to save his company a projected $2.5 million over the next five years.

Today's CIOs are busier than ever, but business strategist Donna Sturgess says a day off from the office for an "immersion" will refresh their view of the organisation, and generate new ideas for innovation.

When CIOs join a new organisation, or their current company changes direction, they have an opportunity to establish themselves as strategic leaders. It doesn't matter if their companies aren't large or if they work in industries that adopt new technologies slowly.

Everybody in our industry seems to love giving CIOs advice. How often have you heard those memorable bromides about understanding your business, thinking "more strategically" or connecting with customers?

Shares in drugs developer Biota Holdings Ltd plunged more than 20 per cent to a nine month low, after the company reported a slump in royalties from its anti-flu drug Relenza.

If you're an enterprise deciding whether now is the time to migrate your e-mail or SharePoint environment into a cloud service, there is a method to all this cloud madness. And if done right, it could transform your company's identity.

Enterprises of all shapes and sizes are catching on to the value in moving e-mail and other productivity apps to the cloud where they can be delivered and managed by vendors like Microsoft, Google or Cisco.

Let's take the glamorous title of "Global CIO" and break it down into some of the job realities. What do multinational CIOs have to do that their domestic counterparts don't?