So you want to be a CTO

Computerworld - In January 2001, three stories in Computerworld mentioned a chief technology officer, or CTO. In January 2003, 26 stories did. The CTO is clearly becoming more common, but it's a difficult role to pin down. CTOs can be technology gurus, visionaries, infrastructure experts or policy enforcers, and contrary to popular belief, they don't usually work for the CIO. "If you talk to six people, you'll get six definitions of the CTO," says John J. Davis, president of John J. Davis & Associates Inc., an IT executive search firm in New York.
To get a feel for what CTOs are really about, it helps to look not only at their work, but also at the human and financial dynamics around them.
Although the role is becoming more common, CTOs are found in only 37% of companies, according to a 2002 survey of several hundred midsize to large companies by Cutter Consortium in Arlington, Mass. The CIO may be involved in recruiting and hiring the CTO, but most CTOs report to another senior executive, such as the CEO or the chief financial officer, and they fill a variety of roles.
In large companies, the CIO's increasing emphasis on business -- often on a worldwide scale - may leave no one minding the IT store, Davis says. In those cases, the CTO is brought in to keep an eye on infrastructure and technology.
That's the situation at Foster City, Calif.-based Inovant Inc., where Scott Thompson is in the process of hiring a CTO. "When you're running a big global business, there are a lot of [infrastructure] decisions that have to be made on a daily basis," explains Thompson, who is executive vice president for technology solutions and de facto CIO at the wholly owned transaction-processing subsidiary of Visa International Inc.
"My job is about translating business plans into technology priorities and creating that constant linkage back to the business and the strategy of the business," he explains. "That translates into a series of initiatives and projects and a development agenda."
In contrast, the CTO, who will report to Thompson, will have "day-in and day-out responsibility for global enterprise architecture, making sure all our transactions in nearly 200 countries always work," he says.
In start-ups, the CTO often fills a catchall technology role. "The smaller the company, the less they can afford the luxury of a guy [who is] more into strategy than technology delivery," Davis says. "So they get someone with technology as the prime skill set."
Rick Stiegler has been CTO at