CW+ Premium Content/Computer Weekly

Stuart Hughes, chief digital information officer (CDIO) at Rolls-Royce, is driven by a desire to use data to give the aerospace and defence giant a competitive advantage. “If you think about what digital transformation is about at Rolls-Royce – especially since I’ve been there, but the process did start before I arrived – then a lot of what we do in civil digital is based on the internet of things,” he says. Formerly at JCB and LateRooms.com, Hughes became CDIO at Rolls-Royce in February 2019. He says the opportunity to find creative solutions to business challenges at one of the world’s most famous engineering firms was the kind of career opportunity he’d been craving. “I love the innovative side of IT,” he says. “For the first 20 years of my career, I worked in most of the innovative dot coms in the UK, and then established group CIO-level leadership at JCB. So, for me, it was a natural step forward of still leading that large enterprise IT group but actually being able to really innovate and specialise.” Creating intelligence...