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Daniel Clydesdale-Cotter, EchoStor Technology’s recently appointed first chief innovation officer, explains why he moved from his CIO role and how he has approached fostering relationships and building the foundation so that innovation becomes “part of every pillar” at the company.
Although his title’s acronym remains the same, Daniel Clydesdale-Cotter’s transition from “chief information officer” to “chief innovation officer” at EchoStor Technologies marks a dramatic shift in emphasis for the IT veteran’s career trajectory.
Before EchoStor named him its innovation leader in August 2025, Clydesdale-Cotter had served for the previous year as chief information officer, a role in which he spearheaded the privately held Norwood, Mass.-based information technology provider’s go-to-market AI strategy.
While innovation has always been on Clydesdale-Cotter’s agenda, his new role requires him to shift focus from overseeing day-to-day internal IT operations to championing new ideas and experimenting with emerging technologies.
In this interview, Clydesdale-Cotter discusses both the opportunities and challenges of his role change, including stepping into a new leadership position at a fast-growing company, building new partnerships, interacting with customers and board members, embracing creativity while, at the same time, aligning his team’s work with business objectives.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Cindy Waxer: How did your transition from chief information officer to chief innovation officer come about?
Daniel Clydesdale-Cotter: Driving innovation, both internally and externally, was always part of my role as CIO. But, in all honesty, the speed at which EchoStor was growing made it difficult to focus on both areas at the same time. Because of that, an opportunity arose for me to focus on innovation exclusively as opposed to also running the day-to-day business, IT operations, and internal IT. The separation of these functions spurred my transition to chief innovation officer.
What has changed most about your day-to-day responsibilities since transitioning to chief innovation officer?
Historically, I would be concerned about backend processes, operational efficiency, and making sure we’re using our applications correctly—all of the things you’d expect from a day-to-day CIO. But now, I’m meeting with customers and having conversations that are much more forward-thinking and strategic. I don’t have as much of the operational ownership for the applications themselves.
Transitioning from IT operations to business strategy can be a challenging endeavor for IT leaders. What are some of the key challenges you’re working on overcoming?
In certain operational roles, you become very tactical. You measure your day based on how much you get done. You may have a never-ending list of tasks to tackle. As chief innovation officer, I have goals in place, but I don’t measure my daily or monthly success. My new role involves more strategic thinking and more measurement of what I’ve done to move the needle from a business perspective. That takes some getting used to if you’re historically more operationally focused.
Another one of the hardest challenges is that when you create a new position like this, there’s always a tendency to go and do the work that you were comfortable doing before. You really have to step outside of your comfort zone and hope the results speak for themselves.
What are some of the projects you’re currently undertaking in your new role?
We’re building out a lot more automated processes and procedures, which are the precursors to really delving into how AI can help EchoStor not only from an operational perspective, but from a business transformation perspective. These initiatives are just starting so 2026 will be a big year. This year, we’ve really been focused on the go-to-market from an AI perspective.
What about working with your C-suite colleagues and the board of directors? How does becoming a chief innovation officer change your relationship with them?
Moving away from tactical responsibilities is a big part of enabling me to work with customers to help them innovate. When you’re talking to other C-suite executives and board members, they’re not really interested in the bits and bytes. They’re interested in the business outcomes, how you got there, and your end goals. They’re much more strategically focused, which gives me the opportunity to be more creative. That freedom of creativity is a really important part of interacting with the C-suite and board members. For instance, I might work with a board member to explore how AI can unlock new revenue streams or how digital platforms can transform customer engagement. These conversations aren’t bound by operational constraints—they’re about the art of the possible.
At the same time, it’s important that a company’s innovation goals reflect an organization’s business objectives. How do you ensure these stay in sync?
In larger organizations, the goals of the company can be misaligned with the technology group. Business goals don’t always trickle down to technology goals. Making sure business goals align with technology initiatives takes strong leaders who communicate regularly so that if there is a change in initiative, we can align innovation goals around what the business is trying to achieve.
A key example is EchoStor really wanting to get into the AI market. Spinning up those resources, conducting research, and building a go-to-market for AI is a great example of the technology innovation group saying, ‘Business is clearly signaling to us that they want to get into that market and we need to help them get there.’
What does the future hold for your newly established role as chief innovation officer?
We’ve created a technology innovation organization within EchoStor that will continue to grow. Ultimately, the plan is to have innovation be part of every pillar of the company, as well as help our customers. That’s an exciting challenge.
