Strategy beyond AI: Five imperatives for 2026

The rise of AI as the most impactful strategic technology trend has been staggering. In some of my own primary research conducted in the infrastructure industry, it captured 32% of the vote in January 2023, and a year later it hit 50%.

Other trends such as AR/VR, 3D printing, digital twins, autonomous vehicles and drones, and quantum computing have garnered a fraction of the attention, with Gartner’s Strategic Technology Trends for 2026 even focusing on AI in six out of 10 of their trends.

So while next year will continue to be about AI, especially agentic AI, it’s important CIOs examine right now every technology adjacency in their business and IT strategies as they finalize plans for 2026.

The natural instinct is to make everything about AI and pursue an AI-first strategy, but what else can empower the business needs to be considered.

With this in mind, here are five strategic imperatives that can help strengthen your AI-first strategy, or even take you beyond AI.

1. Let your innovation charter guide investment focus

For organizations with a formal innovation program, you likely have an innovation charter and yearly plan for how to balance innovation spend across both strategic and tactical investments, as well as across internal and customer-facing projects. Over time, as they build momentum and generate quick wins, organizations typically increase the percentage of their yearly spend on more ambitious, high risk/reward projects, and on more external, customer-facing initiatives.

This same innovation charter and yearly plan can help to guide your AI strategy and investments, and serve as a sounding board for how well the organization is progressing in terms of successfully executing these initiatives.   

2. Demonstrate alignment and add new enablers

Every initiative that makes up a tech strategy has to map into the business strategy. Some may uniquely serve IT, but the majority typically have to align with the business strategy and support its goals and objectives. CIOs and CTOs often have to show how each tech initiative can reduce cost, generate revenue, or both.

Think about how your AI strategy supports these basic imperatives, but also how it supports the unique needs of the business strategy such as adaptability and sustainability.

For example, due to ever increasing disruption from natural disasters and pandemics, to business and tech disruptions, businesses may need the tech strategy to help it become more adaptable to future shocks. This allows it to react to change with intrinsic agility built-in as opposed to having to take months to reset and recalibrate. There’s a large number of technology enablers that support intrinsic agility such as platform business models, blockchain, cloud computing, and smart contracts, but the addition of agentic AI can be a core component to make this vision a reality.  

3. Explore how disruptive trends converge with AI

If eight out of 10 of your strategic imperatives for 2026 have to do with AI, you’re likely missing some critical emerging technologies and trends. Be sure to revisit your list in your tech and trend radar, and explore how they can support your business and tech strategy, and empower your AI strategy.

Some examples include various innovations related to cybersecurity, digital twins, edge computing, robotics and drones, quantum computing, or whatever else is becoming prominent in your industry. Many of these spaces are converging with AI, so look for the latest trends and developments related to Quantum AI, Edge AI, Sovereign AI, AI native development platforms, and AI security platforms.

4. Leverage the power of tech combinations

In any list of emerging technology trends, we tend to think of each one individually, and often implement them individually as well. We have AI projects, digital twin projects, blockchain projects, and so on. But this ignores the power of tech combinations I discuss in Mastering Digital Business.

If you’re looking to leverage AI for unique new customer value propositions and business models, it’s easy to think of just using AI agents to do everything, but this overlooks a huge opportunity. It’s key for organizations to realize AI agents shouldn’t always be implemented in a vacuum. Despite the hype, they often can’t do it all themselves.

Instead, they should be thought of as intelligent building blocks that can be integrated with other emerging and disruptive technologies to create even more compelling value propositions. Think of Amazon’s Just Walk Out checkout-free shopping, which combines AI with computer vision, sensor fusion, RFID, and the Amazon One palm recognition system to create a seamless shop and go experience for customers.

5. Establish a holistic hyperautomation strategy

Many AI pundits say don’t use AI for cost savings from productivity gains, but for revenue generation from new business models, products, and services. This sounds great, but if you pivot your AI strategy to focus solely on this aspect, then you’re missing a big part of the financial opportunity from both AI and the range of automation technologies like scripting and RPA.

To ensure you’re not leaving money on the table, have a standalone automation strategy or, better yet, a hyperautomation strategy that’s independent from your AI strategy, while still taking advantage of the full range of automation technologies like AI where applicable.