The New CTO: Chief Transformation Officer

In the near future, the CTO will need to oversee the transformation of every business process, including how you sell, market, communicate, collaborate, and innovate.

We all know that if you put a frog in water and slowly heat it to the boiling point, the frog will stay put and die. But if you throw the frog into already boiling water, it will quickly jump out. Today’s IT leaders have known about the exponential growth of processing power, storage, and bandwidth, but like the frog, they didn’t notice the boiling point approaching because the change has happened over so many decades. These three change accelerators are what lie behind today’s avalanche of business transformation, and they are directly affecting the roles of CIO and CTO.

In a recent article, I suggested that the role of the CIO needs to shift from Chief Information Officer to a Chief Innovation Officer, due to the massive, rapid, multiple technology-driven transformations that are occurring today. And, just as the CIO’s role needs to change, so too does the CTO’s–from Chief Technology Officer to Chief Transformation Officer. This fundamental shift is necessary to elevate the position’s contribution and relevance.

by Daniel Burrus

Full Story: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/08/todays_cto_needs_to_become.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+harvardbusiness+%28HBR.org%29