Stories about: Creative

In many ways, managing a developer is just like managing any other employee. Developers want managers who'll help them solve business and technical problems, who'll protect them from unnecessary office politics and who will help them meet their personal career goals. But programmers are...different. Like musicians, these creative folks can alternate between big-picture thinking and persnickety detail in a heartbeat. They can be sidetracked by silly toys, and convinced to work overtime by the promise of pizza and a T-shirt. Trying to understand and motivate these people can drive managers-particularly nontechnical managers-to distraction.

As the dynamic duo steering Microsoft together for the past 28 years, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer have been a near-unstoppable team, combining Gates's technical vision and will to power with Ballmer's salesmanship and rousing, if polarizing, personality.

If you ever regretted not joining the Peace Corps, you may yet have your opportunity to lend your time and skills to a developing nation. FINCA International, a nonprofit that provides financial services to the world's lowest income entrepreneurs in 21 countries across Africa, Latin America and Eurasia, is seeking volunteers with IT skills to help the organization expand its mission of fighting poverty. FINCA primarily offers microloans (small loans of a few hundred dollars) to individuals who wish to start a business, such as selling food or handicrafts.

Probably the only technical qualification to put Joel Cohen, a writer and associate producer of The Simpsons, in front of the keynote crowd at the Red Hat Summit in June was that Red Hat Enterprise 5 was used to render some of the animation in The Simpsons movie. But Cohen had surprisingly deep-and quite entertaining-advice about innovation and the creative process to offer the conference attendees.

Roundtable participants: Tom Atkins (moderator), President, The Tramore Group; Brian Gill, CIO, The Canadian Depository for Securities; Kumud Kalia, CIO, Direct Energy; Jeff Kent, CTO, Cineplex Entertainment; Jeff Williams, VP, IS, Staples Business Depot; Andrew Wood, CIO, Aon Reed Stenhouse

How you manage the inevitable letdown after an intense, creative project determines whether you'll keep or lose your best people.

CIOs can make compelling candidates for chief supply chain officer. Four CIOs explain how they made the move

Ian Cohen, CIO at Associated Newspapers, is the antithesis of the newspapers his employers publish. Whereas critics note the Daily Mail for its defeatist stand, Cohen is upbeat and cheerful, despite it being just hours after his beloved Chelsea crashed out of the Champions League to Manchester United.

In March, a celebrity business speaker was booked to entertain an audience of CIOs in Amsterdam. He worried it would be a tough gig for an audience that would be hard to warm up. "The CIO is a troubled person at the moment," he explained, "Many of them think they may be losing their jobs."

Australia's small enterprises are set for an IT facelift through a $251 million splurge to bolster the nation's innovation and competitiveness.

"Your skills are about executing through people," says Rorie Devine the former chief technology officer (CTO) of Betfair. Devine left Betfair after a four year career in which he was credited, by the Hammersmith based organization, with transforming the organization.