The article describes Gartner analyst Gene Alvarez’s three-step approach for CIOs evaluating emerging technologies. First, CIOs should define their organization’s risk “persona” (pioneer, fast follower, or late adopter) and ensure alignment on risk appetite across leadership. Second, they should evaluate specific technology use cases by balancing business value and feasibility, prioritizing those with high impact and realistic implementation potential, and using tools like Gartner’s Hype Cycle to inform adoption timing. Third, CIOs need to assess organizational readiness across technical, financial, vendor, managerial, and external feasibility, including workforce willingness to adopt and broader market and regulatory conditions. Alvarez recommends tools like an emerging technology radar and stresses that decisions must answer what tech to use, how to apply it, and when to deploy it, with business value as the central criterion, despite increased overall digital investment.
