When I tell people that I am the CTO, I usually get one of two reactions. For some, I am the visionary — the one constantly chasing the next disruption and painting the big picture of what technology can do. For others, I am the target-chaser — the one who manages KPIs, calculates ROI, and ensures that systems run flawlessly day and night. Both perspectives capture a part of the truth, but neither tells the full story.
The Creative Dimension
Innovation is not a luxury; it is strategic capital. Without imagination and courage, organizations inevitably slide into irrelevance. McKinsey reported in 2023 that companies consistently allocating fifteen percent of their IT budget to innovation achieved growth more than twice as fast as their peers. That reflects my own conviction: innovation must always be tied to measurable value.
Tesla’s over-the-air updates are a telling example. By extending the life cycle of vehicles and creating a recurring revenue model, Tesla showed that software decisions can be strategic growth levers. These are not technical side projects — they are decisions at the heart of the CTO role: using technology to strengthen intangible assets such as customer trust, brand value, and loyalty.
The Hard Dimension
At the same time, I am judged not by stories alone, but by measurable execution. Gartner found in 2024 that nearly seventy percent of digital transformations fail because KPIs are poorly defined or insufficiently aligned with the board’s agenda. I recognize that reality: without metrics and accountability, innovation stories lose credibility in the boardroom within months.
Amazon Web Services illustrates the other side. Their rise was not only fueled by visionary thinking but also by relentless focus on uptime, latency, and cost per workload. I see my own task mirrored in that: making sure innovation is embedded in financial discipline and risk management, not just in technical delivery.
The Bridge I Must Build
My credibility as a CTO does not depend on whether I am the dreamer or the executor, but on my ability to connect the two worlds. I never present proof-of-concepts as experiments; I position them as investment options with a business case. And I never let KPIs remain buried in dashboards; I translate them into the language of returns that the CFO understands.
The real art is switching language depending on context. With my teams, I speak vision talk — describing how technology can reshape the customer journey or redefine the sector, inspiring them to act boldly. In the boardroom, I switch to CFO talk — framing the very same innovation in terms of ROI, risk reduction, and strategic impact. By telling the same story in two different languages, I keep the energy of my people alive while earning the trust of my fellow executives.
This is me…
So, am I the dreamer or the target-chaser? The truth is that I must be both. Only by dreaming and measuring at the same time can I position technology as a true growth engine. And perhaps that is the essence of the modern CTO: not choosing between the future and the present, but continuously connecting the two.
The modern CTO lives in the top-right quadrant: where creativity meets execution. Too much dreaming leads to castles in the air, too much execution creates short-sighted cost control. The real value lies in connecting both worlds — vision and KPI, future and present. Where do you position your CTO?
