Today’s CIOs are navigating a world where data is fuel and generative AI is a new engine. Last week, I joined Forbes CIO Next Summit to discuss how technology leaders can steer their organization — to explore the vast new opportunities while minimizing risks — in this era of sudden acceleration.
Over the past 18 months, we have been careening down a path formed by massive uncertainty. While we still have an unclear future, the opportunity faced by tech leaders is clear. That opportunity is to drive growth in a challenging market.
The underlying theme at this Summit was the evolving role of tech leaders — how CIOs are taking on more expansive roles to drive their firm’s growth agenda. Tech leaders from leading firms from Autodesk, Lenovo, The Cigna Group, Northwestern Mutual and others shared incredible examples of how they are leveraging technology to lead the growth agenda at their firms.
How are they doing this? They are driving growth in three distinct ways:
- Enabling growth by providing the right solutions to ensure the rest of the organization can achieve successful business outcomes;
- Co-creating growth with partners that expands their firm into new capabilities, products, and markets;
- Amplifying growth leveraging AI and automation that scale their firms to new heights.
Much of the agenda focused on the “amplify” element of growth thanks to the ubiquitous nature of genAI. Forrester data shows that 52% of companies are actively expanding or experimenting with genAI and another 27% have started exploring the technology. However, most organizations are using genAI to drive efficiencies. While efficiency is great and necessary, it really is a bottom-line approach. The real win with genAI is driving effectiveness, which is about increasing revenue, signing up new customers, and uncovering new insights, among other things.
2024 is fast upon us. If you need help driving your firm’s growth agenda, Forrester has a great team of experts ready to help. Drop me a note at mguarini@forrester.com or hit me up on LinkedIn, and I will help get the conversation started. Also, check out my conversation with Janett Haas, SVP, Research & Insights at Forbes, diving deeper into these topics from the event.
