The last edition of this year’s Star Radar features a look ahead to 2025 from some of our foremost thought leaders. You’ll see several familiar themes: AI, digital transformation, human-centered solution, and cross-functional collaboration. They’re all as important as ever. What I think will tie them together in 2025 is sensibility.
After three years of economic and geopolitical uncertainty, there’s room for cautious optimism as we head into 2025, even if the outlook isn't fully predictable. With elections in half the world’s major economies wrapped up, we can expect concrete decisions from the newly chosen leaders. On the business side, companies have had to navigate significant macroeconomic shifts and unprecedented transformative technology like Gen AI. These challenges are pushing businesses to tighten their financial discipline, align strategies with operational realities, and, most importantly, actively moving towards their endgame.
Instead of chasing trends or stretching resources too thin, I believe leaders are likely to tackle their digital agendas with great conviction, adopting a more pragmatic and thoughtful approach next year. While we might not see a substantial GDP rebound, the combination of growing stability and lessons learned from recent years is driving smarter, more focused efforts in digital transformation. This sensible mindset will help leaders achieve meaningful, lasting progress in 2025 and beyond.
Kim Soerensen,
VP of Strategy, Star
As we look ahead to 2025, it's clear that AI technology isn't just another tool – it's on the way to becoming the heartbeat of successful organizations. What's really exciting is how AI is transforming the way we work, creating new possibilities we couldn't have imagined before.
The role of the CTO is evolving into something far more meaningful than 'the person who keeps our systems running.' They're becoming cultural changemakers, helping everyone in the organization embrace and thrive in this new digital landscape. But for this to work, they need genuine connection with their colleagues. Think of it like building bridges – CTOs need to understand the real human challenges their coworkers and customers face, not just the technical specs.
This is where CEOs play a crucial role. Rather than keeping technology discussions in a silo, they need to bring everyone to the table. When marketing shares their customer insights, when operations discusses their daily hurdles, when HR talks about employee needs – the CTO can help weave AI and other technologies into solutions that actually enrich the way people live and work.
Regular conversations about technology shouldn't feel like formal reviews, but rather collaborative sessions where leaders can openly share both successes and setbacks. When everyone understands how AI can help them achieve their goals - through deeper insights, better productivity, streamlined communication - magic happens, and departments naturally start working together, finding innovative solutions that benefit everyone, from employees to customers.
In 2025, AI will move beyond being a feature to becoming a fundamental enabler of business operations and a catalyst for profound organizational transformation. For CTOs at the enterprise level, this shift demands a strategic recalibration of technology investments and organizational priorities. The next technology frontier now lies in creating intelligent, AI-driven ecosystems that encompass advanced data architectures and AI-native infrastructure. This evolution requires implementing scalable, AI-optimized data warehouses and lakes, real-time integration platforms and robust MLOps systems for streamlined AI lifecycle management.
To fully leverage AI's potential, CTOs must work closely with other C-suite leaders to review processes and develop a sustainable AI-driven operating model and mindset across the organization. This means designing technology decisions beyond the IT department, and collaborating with all departments to integrate AI into their strategies, operations and processes to truly augment business performance.
Technology is a powerful tool for digital transformation, yet its true impact hinges on meeting actual needs people have. Digital solutions must resonate with users; otherwise, they risk obsolescence. With each wave of technology and innovation, numerous solutions emerge, yet many fail. And the reason is not because they lack technological sophistication, but from a failure to match them with needs and attitudes of the intended users.
Looking ahead to 2025, we will see a hype around AI-powered products and services focusing on driving new value and outcomes. To stand out amidst this hype and secure lasting relevance, companies must prioritize empathy and a deep understanding of what truly matters to their target audience. AI, as any other technology, is not an endpoint but a means to create lasting value for end users. My advice continues to be adopting a people-first approach so you build solutions with purpose and impact. By focusing on delivering tangible value and enhancing lives, you can navigate the fine line between innovation and hype, driving real progress and making technology truly matter.
As a transformative technology, AI is driving innovation across industries, including highly regulated sectors such as healthcare and life sciences. Its impact is twofold: enabling advanced products and automating complex, data-driven processes, such as imaging, precision medicine, and robotics. At the same time, Generative AI introduces new ways of working by enhancing clinical evaluation, risk management and documentation accuracy – streamlining these into AI-powered organizational systems.
That said, we are in unprecedented times, with AI evolving at an exponential pace while regulations strive to keep up. I believe that innovation thrives when regulatory compliance and scalable quality assurance systems are prioritized. This evolving regulatory landscape is itself a catalyst for innovation, as best practices for compliant AI and good machine learning processes are still being defined. Collaboration among industry leaders, regulatory bodies, and consultants is essential to shaping this framework. By working together, we can unlock AI's full potential while ensuring its responsible application, paving the way for a future that benefits both current and future generations.
Think about your phone for a moment. How many apps sit untouched, rarely (if ever) used? And of the ones you do rely on, how much of their functionality do you realistically use – 20%, maybe 30%? This happens because the needs of users are often overlooked. The same issue plagues digital transformation initiatives, where good-intentioned solutions fail to connect with the people they’re meant to serve. In my view, this disconnect is the leading reason why so many digital transformation efforts fall short.
Engaging users from the outset – through co-creation, feedback and testing – ensures that solutions are not just functional but also practical and meaningful. This human-centric approach minimizes resistance and helps technology integrate naturally into everyday workflows. When solutions solve real problems and feel intuitive to use, adoption becomes effortless, turning ambitious goals into measurable outcomes. It’s about building trust and aligning innovation with human needs, creating systems that empower rather than overwhelm. The result? Smooth implementation, satisfied users, and strategies that deliver lasting impact. After all, the best technology doesn’t just work – it makes life better.
In the rapidly evolving business landscape, the ability to transform challenges into opportunities for innovation and growth has become a critical differentiator among businesses. At Star, deeply rooted in our startup origins, we view resilience not just as a means to avoid disruption, but as the cultivation of adaptive capabilities that enable us to thrive amid significant market shifts. Leaders at the enterprise level can draw lessons from the startup world to cultivate strategic agility, effectively navigating changes driven by ongoing technological advancements, geopolitical shifts, and the evolving workplace dynamics influenced by Gen Z.
To achieve this, technology leaders must adopt an opportunity-seeking mindset across all organizational levels. Generative AI will play a pivotal role in shaping the future of work. CEOs and CHROs must prioritize robust training programs, strategic upskilling initiatives, and establish a tech-enabled learning environment. I believe that knowledge sharing and radical collaboration will be key to fostering resilience in the dynamic world we live in.
Star is a global technology consultancy that supports industry leaders on their digital journey. By connecting business strategy with technology execution, we deliver solutions that help enterprises innovate, optimize and scale.
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