Enterprise architect (EA) leaders are professionals who firstly operate at the enterprise level and act as internal management consultants. The primary goal is to facilitate executives’ execution of defining business and IT strategy and goals, developing business and operating models and measurements to deliver the objectives and key results. Gartner has found that the majority of enterprise architects report into the CIO or CTO and, as such, spend a great deal of time on the IT strategy and portfolio. This leads to EAs providing guidance and governance through reference architectures, models, principles and guidelines. 

Technology innovation (TI) leaders are focused on identifying, informing and keeping track of disruptive innovations and successfully bringing them to the organization. While EAs may be expected to assess trends and identify innovation opportunities, Gartner’s finding is that TI leaders are more often aligned to a CTO and primarily tasked with taking advantage of technology innovation. 

Gartner research has identified four different CTO personas — meaning four different types of CTO roles:

• The CTO as the digital business leader, who is the main force to accelerate digital transformation and innovation.
• The CTO as the digital business enabler, who is more focused on optimizing business operations.
• The CTO as the IT innovator, who is the visionary and main change agent.
• The CTO as the COO of IT, who is the CIO’s right hand and focused on optimizing the IT operations.

While all personas exist, nowadays the digital business leader, digital business enabler and IT innovator are most common. 

EA and TI leaders must:

• Continuously scan and respond to disruptions by evaluating a variety of trends, beyond just technology, to inform their impact on innovation. 
• Guide their technology strategies by understanding the broad technology trends that will affect the near-term planning horizon. 
• Scout emerging technologies to understand the discrete technologies that are on the horizon to anticipate their impact on the organization. 
• Seek diverse viewpoints and experiences to achieve higher rates of successful business innovation; when people from diverse backgrounds and perspectives come together, their unique thoughts pave a path for innovation.

In this podcast, Gartner experts explore the value propositions, challenges and research publications for these two critical roles.