From adding automation to more personalized customer experiences and data-driven decision-making, it’s easy to think from the perspective of the clean-up changes that technology is directed towards business and industry. However, it is also essential to narrow the focus and consider how the increasing use of high-tech tools and the ongoing evolution of these tools will impact and affect the individual roles within the organization.
CTOs are not immune to role-specific alterations. In fact, they may soon be placed on new responsibilities that were within the scope of their C-Suite colleagues. Here, members of the Forbes Technology Council details the potential for immediate changes in the daily work and focus of CTOs and how these key leaders can prepare them.
1. Integrating product management
Over the next five to ten years, the role of CTO will expand to integrate product management and coordinate technology and business strategies under unified leadership. This evolution eliminates silos, accelerates time to the market, and ensures customer-focused, data-driven innovation. CTOs promote accountability, promote collaboration and maximize ROI through Aligned Investments. -Gowtham Chilakapati, Humana
2. Promote innovation and resilience
The job of a CTO is no longer just about skills. It’s about managing cybersecurity, AI ethics, and managing whether we’re at a metaverse conference or simply screen stack. Leadership is important. CTO’s “C” is often overlooked. Over the next five to ten years, CTOS must promote technology while promoting innovation and resilience. Take your curiosity, continue learning, and think of side jobs as a corporate therapist. – Brand Murphy, Deep Link Protocol
FORBES Technology Council is a community only for invitations for world -class CIOs, CTOs, and technology executives. Do you have a qualification?
3. Collaboration that goes beyond key features
The role of CTOs will expand to drive business outcomes over the next few years, align technology with strategy and address cybersecurity and AI ethics. CTOS needs to lead sensual collaboration, promote innovation and ensure compliance. To prepare, CTOs need to strengthen business insight, stay ahead of trends, invest in leadership skills, and focus on sustainability and agility. -Amy Gu, Dynamsoft
4. Adjust technology with business goals
The disruptive potential of digital transformation and AI enhances the role of CTOs. CTOS evolves from a technical expert to a strategic partner, linking technology with business goals. They must hone their executive-level skills, including board-level communication, influence, negotiation, and navigating complex relationships, to drive technology-driven initiatives and collaboration. – Bashir Agbula, hospital for special surgery
5. Filling the past and future
The role of CTOs is evolving, and CTOs need to look to the past, present and future. Among their responsibilities are to work as an accelerator with existing teams and partners, to build data products and handle technical obligations that build the overall vision of technology in the business. -Vavdeep Singh Gill, xenonstack
6. Achieve thorough AI expertise
Over the next five years, the role of CTO will focus on including artificial intelligence in new technologies under development. As businesses increasingly integrate AI into their development strategies, CTOS will become professionally skilled in all of the various aspects of AI as they move forward as human assistants (but not as an alternative to the human brain). It must be. – Alexander Orayevsky, Tomowabe
7. Formation of strategic directions
As technology driven by AI growth takes the central stage to drive business growth, CTOs become increasingly crucial in shaping the strategic direction of a company. Historically, CTOs have managed it and focused on supporting business operations. However, as business innovation and growth become increasingly driven by technology integration, CTOs become more strategic leadership positions. -Nadia Bollinger, HP
8. Work with C-Suite colleagues to leverage your data
CTOs will give you a bigger voice in driving your business strategy. This will become increasingly data-driven. We see stronger partnerships between CFOs, CTOs and CIOs over data-driven capital and operational efficiency. -Ariel Jalali, Paragon Technology Solutions
9. Ensuring the safety of your digital assets
Ensuring the safety and availability of digital assets requires CTOs to address complex technical and product-related challenges to lead collaboration between product teams, operations, IT, and security. CTOs are crucial in understanding and managing these critical needs and position them as a key figure in C-Suite to promote cybersecurity initiatives and strategies. – Ben Verghese, Ilmio
10. Balancing innovation and security
The role of CTOs moves from the role of technology leadership to driving business strategy. In this age of AI, cloud computing and embedded funding, CTOs need to balance the pace of innovation with security and compliance. Current and ambitious CTOs need to deepen their expertise in AI-driven solutions, regulatory environments and scalable architectures while aligning technology with business growth. – Andrew Riabchuk, Akurateco
11. Looking for a competitive advantage
Over the next five to ten years, the role of CTOs will shift from overseeing technology infrastructure to driving business innovation by leveraging AI, data and automation to leverage competitive advantages. To prepare, CTOs will develop strategic C-Suite partnerships to deepen their expertise in new technology, agility, continuous learning, proficiency, and tailor technology to dynamic and evolving business goals. It must be matured. -Sunil Dolwani, ZS Associates India Pvt Ltd
12. Applying technology to productivity and value creation
AI will be crucial when restructuring highly skilled roles, including software engineering, and CTOS manages AI-driven workflows in areas such as legal and finance. By acting as an AI agent HR leader, we focus on applying technology to productivity and value creation. With the rise in digital threats, CTOs play an important role in protecting organizations. – Gabriel Labrada, Process Street
13. Achieve decarbonization and efficiency goals
The role of CTOs will expand to coordinate technology ecosystems that bridge AI-driven automation, advanced analytics, and renewable integration to achieve decarbonization and efficiency goals. CTOS needs to master cloud-native architecture, lead cross-industry collaborations, and coordinate innovation with business outcomes and strict ESG regulations while ensuring ethical AI deployments. -Shankar Narayanan, Amazon Web Services
14. Balancing excellent governance with faster production
The role of CTOs will change dramatically over the next few years as technology strategies need to consider reducing the gap between business users and technology. Artificial intelligence allows for faster production of business apps driven by plain language explanations. Still, it can lead to much less governance, poses a major challenge for an organization’s CTO. – Jose Rodriguez, Link Consulting
15. CX operation, operation and data use improvements
Over the next five to ten years, the role of CTO will move from managing product technology to leading overall innovation. They will focus on how new technologies can improve customer experience, operations and data usage. CTOs need to work together across the business, solve real problems and drive growth. To prepare, CTOs need to develop leadership skills and remain open to new technologies. – Nikita Gupta, Simba
16. Risk Management
In addition to driving innovation, Chief Technology Officers will also play a pivotal role in mitigating emerging threats as technology becomes central to enterprise risk management. This evolution requires a broader focus as CTOS acts as an engineer and strategic risk advisor. Building resilience to technical strategies is a key CTO differentiator. -Rochelle Blease, G2 Risk Solutions
17. Building Technology Ecosystem
CTOs are not only technical experts in the organization, but also ecosystem leaders, and are needed to work together and build partnerships across the industry. You need to be skilled in a variety of areas, including AI, infrastructure, and security. To prepare, CTOs need to develop strategic thinking skills, build cross-functional expertise, invest in leadership, and build ecosystem relationships. -Rahul Arulkumaran, Yuma
18. Focused on the finances of technology investments
The role of CTOs is expected to evolve to align technology, data and AI initiatives with business goals and become more business enablers. CTOS should focus on justifying the ROI of investments made over the years since Covid. And now, as AI is part of everyone’s strategy, they need to focus on keeping costs down and improving the speed of the market. -Motasem El Bawab, n3xt Sports
19. Match innovation to social values
The role of CTOs evolves to balance the delivery of transformative technology and ensure ethical AI practices, focusing on long-term social impacts beyond profit-driven innovation. As AI and emerging technologies continue to shape everyday life, CTOS will lead efforts to coordinate values and innovations such as equity, privacy and inclusiveness while achieving business goals. -Karthik Subramanian, Mozilla Corporation
20. Adopting cryptographic characteristics
One topic flying under the radar is the threat quantum computing poses to today’s encryption. This has forced government agencies to release new encryption algorithms and to leave RSA and ECC, which are all digitally supported. Future CTOS should ensure that their organization adopts systems that support cryptographic properties. The era of static algorithms is over. -Ted Shorter, KeyFactor
