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Khalid Kark
Bill Briggs
John Tweardy
Scott Buchholz

Working this way often requires a tech leader to embrace new approaches to tech strategy and execution—in other words, to be agile in response to changing business circumstances while continuing to invest in building future capabilities. “You’ve really got to embrace innovation and pursue transformational opportunities. The old-school, top-down IT organizational structure doesn't work anymore. That's just not going to be successful,” says Olsovsky. “As a technology leader, you can’t manage from behind a desk; you’ve got to make yourself available and work to remove obstacles for your people.”

A technologist’s ability to gaze out to the distant horizon and recognize potential disruptions—and the opportunities they present to innovate—can be critical for building long-term competitive advantage. However, as discussed in Deloitte’s annual Tech Trends reports, sensing future opportunities is not enough. In today’s hypercompetitive marketplace, only those individuals who can translate the signals and breadcrumbs of nascent innovations into a strategic vision, and then drive the changes necessary to turn that vision into reality, can truly become the kinetic leader that companies need.25

Tech vanguards prioritize innovation—not just its outputs, but also the processes, funding, and technology mindshare that fuel it. Each of these inputs can become mission critical to success. As such, the kinetic leader is often fully engaged across the innovation life cycle, from sensing and ideation to strategic planning to prototyping and deployment, and finally with scaling an innovation to meet complex enterprise needs (figure 12).

 

  1. Anjali Shaikh, Kristi Lamar, and Ranjit Bawa, Paving diverse paths to technology leadership, Deloitte Insights, March 6, 2020.

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  2. Kark et al., The future of work in technology, Deloitte Insights, June 10, 2019. 

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  3. Kark, Reinventing tech finance.

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  4. John Celi et al., Finance and the future of IT: Funding innovation at the speed of agile, Deloitte Insights, January 15, 2020.

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  5. Khalid Kark et al., The new CIO: Business-savvy technologist, Deloitte Insights, April 10, 2020.

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  6. Kark et al., The new CIO.

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  7. Shaikh, Lamar, and Bawa, Paving diverse paths to technology leadership.

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  8. Khalid Kark, Reinventing tech finance: The evolution from IT budgets to technology investments, Deloitte Insights, January 7, 2020.

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  9. Khalid Kark, Anjali Shaikh, and Caroline Brown, Technology budgets: From value preservation to value creation, Deloitte Insights, November 28, 2017.

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  10. Mike Bechtel, Scott Buchholz, and Bill Briggs, Up and coming technology on the horizon: A future look at the trends, Deloitte Insights, January 15, 2020.

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  11. Khalid Kark et al., The future of work in technology: How technology leaders can reimagine technology work, the workforce, and the workplace, Deloitte Insights, June 10, 2019.

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  12. Punit Renjen, The heart of resilient leadership: Responding to COVID-19, Deloitte Insights, March 16, 2020.

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