Taking Risks to Become Failure Proof at Princeton University with CIO Jay Dominick

On the third episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Jay Dominick, CIO at Princeton University. Princeton University is a unique organization with 8000 students, over 7000 employees, its own power plant and own police force; in short, ample opportunities for deploying impactful technological innovations at scale. Evan and Saam speak with Jay about balancing risk and reward, the benefits Princeton attains from collaborating with startups, navigating COVID-19, and the best practices for balancing various stakeholders’ technology needs at universities.

Quick hits from Jay:

On managing risk during COVID-19: “What we were facing was an existential crisis... the risk mitigation switched into failure mitigation. We had to take risks to avoid failure…. People tend to be risk averse, but really they should focus on being failure adverse…We had to change a lot of rules…around work at home or around what students could be considered to do with respect to technology in their studies.”

On the benefits of working with startups: “One of the reasons we work with startups is to give our organization the opportunity to see when people are just thinking differently…engagement with the innovator's mind keeps us healthy.”

On how to nurture innovation: “...for CIOs, if you're encouraging innovation from within, you have to figure out how to align your own success and interests with the innovator's success and interests.”

Recent book recommendation: Caste by Isabel Wickerson

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Enterprise Software Innovators is a show where top tech executives share how they innovate at scale. Each episode covers unique insights and stories that will help you succeed as a technology leader. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/

Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Luke Reiser, Josh Meer and Emily Shaw.