CDIO of the Year

For the Chief Digital & Information Officer owning the enterprise-wide digital agenda end to end.

CDIO of the Year sits inside Individual Leadership Excellence and is open to organisations in every sector — the category name and criteria stay identical across Automotive, FMCG, Energy, Oil & Gas, Logistics, Aviation, Hospitality, Media, GCC, Public Sector, Education, Startups, Telecom and the rest. Entries are compared like-for-like, so you are only ever measured against organisations of a broadly comparable scale and operating context.

• Self-nomination — the organisation, team or leader entering their own work.
• Internal sponsor — a leader, manager or colleague nominating on behalf of the team that delivered it.
• Partner or agency — a delivery partner may nominate, provided the client organisation is named and the partner's own role is stated clearly.
• Third party — a peer, board member or industry observer may nominate; the secretariat will seek the nominee's confirmation before evaluation.

Entry is free, you may nominate for a maximum of 3 categories, and every nomination is autosaved so you can return to it.

Six steps from start to submission. The two full-submission steps are what most of your time goes into — everything before them takes a couple of minutes.

1. Stage 01

   Your details

   Who is submitting, and your relationship to the nomination. Reused across nominations in the same session.

2. Stage 02

   Category & industry

   Pick the category the jury evaluates against.

3. Stage 03 · Step 01

   Submission details

   Profile, context, goal and approach for the nominee. Narrative answers, no numbers needed yet.

4. Stage 03 · Step 02

   Proof & evidence

   Before/after metrics, outcomes, supporting documents and final declarations.

5. Final

   Review & submit

   Every answer on one page, with jump-to-edit links, before anything is filed.

• Work that is live, at scale, and has produced measurable outcomes within the last 24 months.
• Initiatives with a clear owner, defined scope and independently verifiable results.
• Programmes that have moved beyond pilot into institutional practice.

• Concepts, pilots or intended work that has not yet gone into production.
• Narrative-only submissions with no evidence of adoption or outcome.
• Work substantially delivered by an external agency where the nominee's own contribution is unclear.

• A concise business context — the baseline problem and its stakes.
• Quantitative outcomes (before/after) — ranges and indexed values are acceptable for sensitive metrics.
• 2–3 short internal or external references who can verify the work.
• Optional: architecture summary, adoption metrics, independent audit or press coverage.