Michael Nilles
Chief Digital & Information Officer
Henkel Group
CIO Award Judge 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016
CIO Award Winner 2015
Speaker/Panelist 2017, 2016, 2015
The CIO Adventure: Insights from the Leadership Award Finalists (2017)
Best Practices for Managing a Digital Innovation Portfolio (2016)
Leading Digital: A Manifesto for IT and Business Executives (2015)
Michael Nilles is the Chief Digital & Information Officer (CDIO) for Henkel. At Henkel he is responsible for all Digital, IT, Corporate Venture Capital activities and the Open Innovation Platform HenkelX Ventures. Mr. Nilles brings more than 20 years of experience spearheading digital innovation and large-scale digital business transformations for multi-billion industrial businesses. As an early adopter of the Industrial Internet, he gained extensive knowledge in deploying smart, connected and data-driven capabilities at scale and developing new digital business models.
Before joining Henkel he was member of the Group Executive Board and Chief Digital Officer (CDO) for Schindler as well as the CEO of Schindler Digital Business AG.
Prior to Schindler, Mr. Nilles held various executive management positions at Mannesmann and Bosch Rexroth. As CIO of Bosch Rexroth, he digitized the entire value chain driving operational excellence. Mr. Nilles began his career as software engineer and consultant at SAP. During international assignments, he worked and lived for several years in China and in the US.
He also serves on the Supervisory Boards of Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Lufthansa Technik AG, sits on the Advisory Board of Silicon Valley based FogHorn Systems and is a member of IOTA Foundation.
Mr. Nilles’ work in driving digital business transformations was recognized in 2015 with the MIT Sloan Leadership Award and the European Digital Business Innovation Award. He was also named “CIO of the Year in Germany 2015”. He holds a master’s degree in business administration and computer science from the University of Cologne, Germany and is an alumnus of Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, USA.
“On behalf of Schindler, I am incredibly honored to be the 2015 winner of the MIT
Sloan CIO Leadership Award. This is an outstanding recognition of our entire team
which is taking digitization to the next level with great dedication and vigorous
innovation for both, our customers and our employees. It substantiates our strategic
efforts to further drive digitization in order to stay at the forefront of our industry.”
- Cybersecurity Is the Biggest Challenge to Industrial IoT Development: Schindler Digital Chief (2017-05-24)
- Firms Need Separate Incubators for Emerging Tech Projects (2016-05-18)
- What does it take to be a transformational CIO? (2016-05-10)
- What Is Driving the Digital Economy? (2016-04-07)
- Anatomy of a Transformation (2016-02-14)
- Call for Nominations: The 2016 MIT Sloan CIO Leadership Award (2016-01-19)
- CIO seeks ‘disruptive opportunities’ (2015-12-8)
- CIO is pushing the right buttons (2015-10-30)
- Five digital disruptors talk successes and strategies (2015-08-10)
- Will the role of the chief data officer eclipse that of the CIO? (2015-07-28)
- The CDO Interview: Digital Transformation at CVS Health (2015-07-13)
- MIT Sloan winner: ‘Unity of effort’ vital to digital transformation (2015-07-02)
- CVS Health’s Chief Digital Officer On Working With IT To Drive Digital Transformation (2015-06-18)
- How Can We Make the CIO Job More Appealing? (2015-05-27)
- Digital Business Models Take Shape Across–and Among–Industries (2015-05-26)
- The Morning Download: Internet of Things Opens Way for New Business Models (2015-05-20)
- MIT Sloan CIO Symposium Announces Winner of the 2015 CIO Leadership Award (2015-05-20)