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There are many contradictions in the CIO role: You are intimately involved in every aspect of the business yet are often considered separate from it. You are the steward of cost containment, yet you must also drive innovation. Technology is critical to your company's success, yet its value is difficult to demonstrate. In other words, it's a wonder IT innovation happens at all.

H&R Block's (HRB) virtualization project -- a CIO 100 Award winner this year -- is putting thin clients in the tax preparer's thousands of retail stores in an effort to simplify its operating environment and cut expenses. The change should also help it to better compete with chains such as Jackson Hewitt, as well as with independent tax preparers and software-only rivals such as TurboTax and Intuit (INTU).

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.

Coty is growing.

For CIOs who distrust most technological promises (having heard too many of them), cloud computing sets off alarm bells. Yet those CIOs finding success in the cloud say their colleagues should be equally skeptical of IT managers who claim they can deliver better and cheaper results internally. (For expert advice about cloud-vendor contracts, see "How the Cloud Can Turn Toxic.)

Internet Explorer 9, which becomes generally available tonight at an event at the South by Southwest show in Austin, Texas, has come to the end of the browser's most elaborate release process.

When you think of cutting-edge smartphones, "Kyocera" most likely isn't one of the first company names that come to mind. But that could soon change if today's unveiling of the Kyocera Echo, the world's first smartphone with two touch screen displays, at least according to Sprint, is any indicator of things to come.

Frederic Chanfrau, senior vice president of IT for governance, quality and vendor management with Schneider Electric, wants everyone in the company's IT organization to understand three points about going green. First, that energy demands are increasing at the same time as the company must decrease its greenhouse gas emissions; next, that each employee is responsible for helping address this challenge; and finally, that running a sustainable technology shop doesn't necessarily cost more. "They can put their own stone in the building of a greener IT organization," Chanfrau says. But they have to know how.

The five accomplished executives we induct this year into the CIO Hall of Fame are leaders defined by the drive to test themselves and, in the process, push their organizations to new heights. They combine superb management with technology prowess to produce a line of sustained financial results for the public and private sectors.

There are CIOs who favor the bold strike over slower, more considered moves.