At Forrester’s annual Technology & Innovation North America Forum in Austin, Texas in September, our founder and CEO, George Colony, kicked off the event by declaring that “GenAI is the most important technology thunderstorm of the last 40 years.” So it’s no surprise that in this year’s Forrester predictions, our crystal ball sees a lot of changes in 2024 driven by genAI. Forrester’s September 2023 Artificial Intelligence Pulse Survey revealed that 62% of companies are either experimenting (29%) or expanding (33%) with generative AI. These companies are also putting significant investment and technology budget behind their effort, with more than 45% increasing funds for AI capabilities by more than 5%.
The technology behind generative AI and the pace of its advancement is very important for technology executives to understand and keep pace with in the year ahead. To make the most of AI, however, you must consider more than just the technology itself. You will need to modernize your entire technology strategy to the core and give your organization and operations an epic boost. To help you do that, here is a sneak peek of our predictions showing what we think is in store for technology leaders in 2024:
- Only 10% of tech execs will get “growth” right despite the clear call to action. While most advanced firms have made growth a priority, many of them fall short on execution because of disconnected systems and lack of leadership support. Accelerate your growth engine by tying technology investment to business outcomes while engaging every leader in your organization with data or technology demands. AI will be critical to every conversation.
- Twenty percent of tech execs will turn to shadow HR to upgrade talent acquisition. As the shelf life of technology skills becomes shorter and emerging skills are harder to find, tech leaders will look to their HR partners to help refactor job descriptions, use skills assessments, and develop upskilling paths, all underpinned by data-driven skills intelligence technologies. Unfortunately, they’ll find that these efforts fall short. The most frustrated tech leaders will take talent into their own hands — creating “shadow HR.”
- Tech execs will seek partners to close the AI gap as 50% fail to master it internally. Acquiring the knowledge and skill to deploy genAI, prompt engineering, scenario prioritization, and new AI-infused applications will drive tech execs straight to their service providers. Vendors such as Accenture, Tata Consultancy Services, and Wipro are already heavily investing in these practices to provide the skills, alliances, and tools that tech teams need to make the most of their AI investments. Savvy tech execs will recognize that this AI movement is an opportunity to rethink external relationships and will work to find a healthy balance between overly dependent outsourcing and co-innovation partnerships.
Read our full report, Predictions 2024: Tech Leadership, to get more detail about each of these predictions, plus two more bonus predictions. Set up a Forrester guidance session to discuss these predictions or plan out your 2024 technology strategy.
If you aren’t yet a Forrester client, you can download our complimentary Predictions guide, which covers our top predictions for 2024. Get additional complimentary resources, including webinars, on the Predictions 2024 hub.
