Sept. 11, 2000

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CIO Starr, Being No. 1 Is Part Of The Pattern

By Marianne Kolbasuk McGee

or 3Com Corp. senior VP and CIO David Starr, this year's InformationWeek 500 might seem a bit like déjávu. That's because Starr is the first person to be CIO at two No. 1 InformationWeek 500 companies. Starr was CIO at Knight Ridder Inc. when the newspaper publishing company landed the top spot in the 1998 ranking.

What's the secret of his success as a CIO? "Doing a lot of little things right," says Starr, who left Knight Ridder 16 months ago to join 3Com. "We're doing something like 400 projects, and it's the ability to juggle those 400 projects that's the unglamorous part of IT."

A recurring theme in Starr's career is the dismantling of IT organizations because of divestitures. While CIO at ITT Industries in the mid-1990s, Starr orchestrated the outsourcing of IT operations as the conglomerate shed itself of a number of its businesses, including Hartford Insurance and ITT Sheraton hotels. In the past year, Starr has guided the formation of new IT operations for two businesses being spun off by 3Com, personal digital assistant maker Palm Inc. and analog modem manufacturer U.S. Robotics.

A big attraction of being CIO at 3Com is that the company makes "cooler stuff" than the other places that Starr has served as head of IT. "I got free newspapers at Knight Ridder, magazines at Reader's Digest, and I could get antilock brakes and an insurance policy from ITT," Starr says with a laugh. "But this is much more fun stuff. It's part of the Internet experience--making these things, seeing how they come out, and using them."

Starr's roots in technology have served him well as a CIO. After graduating from Florida State University with a degree in physics, Starr began his IT career as a programmer. Starr, who also did graduate work at Harvard Business School, says technologist CIOs can better relate to IT staff and vendors than those with a pure business background. "Technologists will come around and sniff first," Starr says. "They'll test you. They'll throw out a few words to see if you know what they're talking about."

Starr, who sits on 3Com's executive committee, says it's vital for a CIO to have a good rapport with his company's CEO and other senior executives. The value of Starr goes beyond his role as a key adviser to CEO and chairman Eric Benhamou. "To me, David Starr represents one of our prime customers," Benhamou says, because 3Com's IT department uses company products. "He helps in the selling and buying process. He's a good contributor in multiple ways."

Return to main story, "Simplicity Takes Hard Work."

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