Technology – Shifting from a Cost Center to a Value Creator
Some companies still treat technology as a cost center, others treat it as a growth engine.
McKinsey released their Global Tech Agenda 2026 back in February, surveying 632 C-level executives across 69 countries.
Key Findings
Here’s what separates the top performers:
Nearly 2/3 of top-performing companies have their technology leaders “very involved” in crafting enterprise strategy – vs. just 52% of other organizations.
Half of top performers now co-create strategy between business and tech teams continuously throughout the year – nearly double the rate from last year.
28% of top performers were planning to increase their tech budgets by more than 10% in 2026.
More than half of top performers have already transformed their IT function using AI in the past two years.
Forward-thinking CIOs are investing in agentic automation to change how business gets done and in data productization to generate entirely new revenues.
They are replacing annual budget planning with practices that fuel innovation – i.e. product and platform models, continuous decision-making, engineering excellence, and capability-led talent models.
The #1 investment priority is obviously Artificial Intelligence. And this has now surpassed cybersecurity and infrastructure as the top technology investment area.
We already see leaders building in-house capabilities, reskilling their own people, and weaving AI into decision-taking.
Vision for the future
We can find thousands of IT stories out there. But very few still are business transformation stories like, for instance, Aviva. They deployed 80+ AI models across their claims journey. This is how they reduced liability-assessment time by 23 days, cut customer complaints by 65%, and increased their customer satisfaction score sevenfold.
At top-performing companies, technology’s center of gravity has shifted from a cost center to a value creator.
What about you? Are you writing the AI story as we speak? Is your technology leader shaping your company’s future – or just keeping the lights on?
