Smart Products Will Require A Hybrid CTO/CIO Skill Set

The era of the standalone product is over. More and more offerings are becoming intelligent, connected, and thus able to provide more engaging experiences for customers in business or consumer settings. Firms can leverage falling technology cost curves and new deployment architectures based on cloud and mobile to dramatically extend the software value proposition and differentiation of their products. As a result, the boundary of what is a product and what is a service will continue to blur. This design shift — focusing on connectivity, intelligence, software, and user experience — will require a combination of skills and capabilities that are currently fragmented across the organization and its expanding ecosystem of partners.