28/9/23, 21:55 A CIO and CTO technology guide to generative AI | McKinsey

Technology’s generational moment with

generative AI: A CIO and CTO guide

July 11, 2023 | Article

CIOs and CTOs can take nine actions to reimagine

business and technology with generative AI.

DOWNLOADS

 Article (12 pages)

H
ardly a day goes by without some new business-busting
development related to generative AI surfacing in the media. The
excitement is well deserved— McKinsey research estimates that
generative AI could add the equivalent of $2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion of
value annually.[ 1 ]

CIOs and chief technology officers (CTOs) have a critical role in capturing
that value, but it’s worth remembering we’ve seen this movie before. New
technologies emerged—the internet, mobile, social media—that set off a
melee of experiments and pilots, though significant business value often
proved harder to come by. Many of the lessons learned from those
developments still apply, especially when it comes to getting past the
pilot stage to reach scale. For the CIO and CTO, the generative AI boom

https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/technologys-generational-moment-with-generative-ai-a-cio-and-cto-guide#/ 1/19
28/9/23, 21:55 A CIO and CTO technology guide to generative AI | McKinsey

presents a unique opportunity to apply those lessons to guide the C-suite

in turning the promise of generative AI into sustainable value for the
business.

Through conversations with dozens of tech leaders and an analysis of

generative AI initiatives at more than 50 companies (including our own),
we have identified nine actions all technology leaders can take to create
value, orchestrate technology and data, scale solutions, and manage risk
for generative AI (see sidebar, “A quick primer on key terms”):

1. Move quickly to determine the company’s posture for the adoption

of generative AI, and develop practical communications to, and
appropriate access for, employees.

2. Reimagine the business and identify use cases that build value
through improved productivity, growth, and new business models.
Develop a “financial AI” (FinAI) capability that can estimate the true
costs and returns of generative AI.

3. Reimagine the technology function, and focus on quickly building

generative AI capabilities in software development, accelerating
technical debt reduction, and dramatically reducing manual effort in IT
operations.

4. Take advantage of existing services or adapt open-source

generative AI models to develop proprietary capabilities (building and
operating your own generative AI models can cost tens to hundreds of
millions of dollars, at least in the near term).

5. Upgrade your enterprise technology architecture to integrate and

manage generative AI models and orchestrate how they operate with
each other and existing AI and machine learning (ML) models,
applications, and data sources.

https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/technologys-generational-moment-with-generative-ai-a-cio-and-cto-guide#/ 2/19
28/9/23, 21:55 A CIO and CTO technology guide to generative AI | McKinsey

6. Develop a data architecture to enable access to quality data by

processing both structured and unstructured data sources.

7. Create a centralized, cross-functional generative AI platform team

to provide approved models to product and application teams on
demand.

8. Invest in upskilling key roles—software developers, data engineers,

MLOps engineers, and security experts—as well as the broader
nontech workforce. But you need to tailor the training programs by
roles and proficiency levels due to the varying impact of generative AI.

9. Evaluate the new risk landscape and establish ongoing mitigation

practices to address models, data, and policies.

1. Determine the company’s posture

for the adoption of generative AI

As use of generative AI becomes increasingly widespread, we have seen

CIOs and CTOs respond by blocking employee access to publicly
available applications to limit risk. In doing so, these companies risk
missing out on opportunities for innovation, with some employees even
perceiving these moves as limiting their ability to build important new
skills.

Instead, CIOs and CTOs should work with risk leaders to balance the real
need for risk mitigation with the importance of building generative AI
skills in the business. This requires establishing the company’s posture
regarding generative AI by building consensus around the levels of risk
with which the business is comfortable and how generative AI fits into the
business’s overall strategy. This step allows the business to quickly
determine company-wide policies and guidelines.

https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/technologys-generational-moment-with-generative-ai-a-cio-and-cto-guide#/ 3/19
28/9/23, 21:55 A CIO and CTO technology guide to generative AI | McKinsey

Once policies are clearly defined, leaders should communicate them to

the business, with the CIO and CTO providing the organization with
appropriate access and user-friendly guidelines. Some companies have
rolled out firmwide communications about generative AI, provided broad
access to generative AI for specific user groups, created pop-ups that
warn users any time they input internal data into a model, and built a
guidelines page that appears each time users access a publicly available
generative AI service.

2. Identify use cases that build value

through improved productivity,

growth, and new business models

CIOs and CTOs should be the antidote to the “death by use case” frenzy
that we already see in many companies. They can be most helpful by
working with the CEO, CFO, and other business leaders to think through
how generative AI challenges existing business models, opens doors to
new ones, and creates new sources of value. With a deep understanding
of the technical possibilities, the CIO and CTO should identify the most
valuable opportunities and issues across the company that can benefit
from generative AI—and those that can’t. In some cases, generative AI is
not the best option.

McKinsey research , for example, shows generative AI can lift productivity

for certain marketing use cases (for example, by analyzing unstructured
and abstract data for customer preference) by roughly 10 percent and
customer support (for example, through intelligent bots) by up to 40
percent.[ 2 ] The CIO and CTO can be particularly helpful in developing a
perspective on how best to cluster use cases either by domain (such as
customer journey or business process) or use case type (such as creative
content creation or virtual agents) so that generative AI will have the most
https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/technologys-generational-moment-with-generative-ai-a-cio-and-cto-guide#/ 4/19
28/9/23, 21:55 A CIO and CTO technology guide to generative AI | McKinsey

value. Identifying opportunities won’t be the most strategic task—there

are many generative AI use cases out there—but, given initial limitations
of talent and capabilities, the CIO and CTO will need to provide feasibility
and resource estimates to help the business sequence generative AI
priorities.

Providing this level of counsel requires tech leaders to work with the
business to develop a FinAI capability to estimate the true costs and
returns on generative AI initiatives. Cost calculations can be particularly
complex because the unit economics must account for multiple model
and vendor costs, model interactions (where a query might require input
from multiple models, each with its own fee), ongoing usage fees, and
human oversight costs.

3. Reimagine the technology function

Generative AI has the potential to completely remake how the tech

function works. CIOs and CTOs need to make a comprehensive review of
the potential impact of generative AI on all areas of tech, but it’s
important to take action quickly to build experience and expertise. There
are three areas where they can focus their initial energies:

Software development: McKinsey research shows generative AI

coding support can help software engineers develop code 35 to 45
percent faster, refactor code 20 to 30 percent faster, and perform code
documentation 45 to 50 percent faster.[ 3 ] Generative AI can also
automate the testing process and simulate edge cases, allowing teams
to develop more-resilient software prior to release, and accelerate the
onboarding of new developers (for example, by asking generative AI
questions about a code base). Capturing these benefits will require
extensive training (see more in action 8) and automation of integration

https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/technologys-generational-moment-with-generative-ai-a-cio-and-cto-guide#/ 5/19
28/9/23, 21:55 A CIO and CTO technology guide to generative AI | McKinsey

and deployment pipelines through DevSecOps practices to manage

the surge in code volume.

Technical debt: Technical debt can account for 20 to 40 percent of

technology budgets and significantly slow the pace of development.[ 4 ]
CIOs and CTOs should review their tech-debt balance sheets to
determine how generative AI capabilities such as code refactoring,
code translation, and automated test-case generation can accelerate
the reduction of technical debt.

IT operations (ITOps): CIOs and CTOs will need to review their ITOps
productivity efforts to determine how generative AI can accelerate
processes. Generative AI’s capabilities are particularly helpful in
automating such tasks as password resets, status requests, or basic
diagnostics through self-serve agents; accelerating triage and
resolution through improved routing; surfacing useful context, such as
topic or priority, and generating suggested responses; improving
observability through analysis of vast streams of logs to identify events
that truly require attention; and developing documentation, such as
standard operating procedures, incident postmortems, or performance
reports.

4. Take advantage of existing services

or adapt open-source generative AI

models

A variation of the classic “rent, buy, or build” decision exists when it

comes to strategies for developing generative AI capabilities. The basic
rule holds true: a company should invest in a generative AI capability
where it can create a proprietary advantage for the business and access
existing services for those that are more like commodities.

https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/technologys-generational-moment-with-generative-ai-a-cio-and-cto-guide#/ 6/19
28/9/23, 21:55 A CIO and CTO technology guide to generative AI | McKinsey

The CIO and CTO can think through the implications of these options as
three archetypes:

Taker—uses publicly available models through a chat interface or an

API, with little or no customization. Good examples include off-the-shelf
solutions to generate code (such as GitHub Copilot) or to assist
designers with image generation and editing (such as Adobe Firefly).
This is the simplest archetype in terms of both engineering and
infrastructure needs and is generally the fastest to get up and running.
These models are essentially commodities that rely on feeding data in
the form of prompts to the public model.

Shaper—integrates models with internal data and systems to generate

more customized results. One example is a model that supports sales
deals by connecting generative AI tools to customer relationship
management (CRM) and financial systems to incorporate customers’
prior sales and engagement history. Another is fine-tuning the model
with internal company documents and chat history to act as an
assistant to a customer support agent. For companies that are looking
to scale generative AI capabilities, develop more proprietary
capabilities, or meet higher security or compliance needs, the Shaper
archetype is appropriate.

There are two common approaches for integrating data with generative
AI models in this archetype. One is to “bring the model to the data,”
where the model is hosted on the organization’s infrastructure, either
on-premises or in the cloud environment. Cohere, for example, deploys
foundation models on clients’ cloud infrastructure, reducing the need
for data transfers. The other approach is to “bring data to the model,”
where an organization can aggregate its data and deploy a copy of the
large model on cloud infrastructure. Both approaches achieve the goal
of providing access to the foundation models, and choosing between
them will come down to the organization’s workload footprint.
https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/technologys-generational-moment-with-generative-ai-a-cio-and-cto-guide#/ 7/19
28/9/23, 21:55 A CIO and CTO technology guide to generative AI | McKinsey

Maker—builds a foundation model to address a discrete business case.

Building a foundation model is expensive and complex, requiring huge
volumes of data, deep expertise, and massive compute power. This
option requires a substantial one-off investment—tens or even
hundreds of millions of dollars—to build the model and train it. The cost
depends on various factors, such as training infrastructure, model
architecture choice, number of model parameters, data size, and expert
resources.

Each archetype has its own costs that tech leaders will need to consider
(Exhibit 1). While new developments, such as efficient model training
approaches and lower graphics processing unit (GPU) compute costs
over time, are driving costs down, the inherent complexity of the Maker
archetype means that few organizations will adopt it in the short term.
Instead, most will turn to some combination of Taker, to quickly access a
commodity service, and Shaper, to build a proprietary capability on top of
foundation models.

Exhibit 1

5. Upgrade your enterprise

technology architecture to integrate

and manage generative AI models

Organizations will use many generative AI models of varying size,

complexity, and capability. To generate value, these models need to be
able to work both together and with the business’s existing systems or
applications. For this reason, building a separate tech stack for
generative AI creates more complexities than it solves. As an example, we

https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/technologys-generational-moment-with-generative-ai-a-cio-and-cto-guide#/ 8/19
28/9/23, 21:55 A CIO and CTO technology guide to generative AI | McKinsey

can look at a consumer querying customer service at a travel company to

resolve a booking issue (Exhibit 2). In interacting with the customer, the
generative AI model needs to access multiple applications and data
sources.

Exhibit 2

https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/technologys-generational-moment-with-generative-ai-a-cio-and-cto-guide#/ 9/19
28/9/23, 21:55 A CIO and CTO technology guide to generative AI | McKinsey

For the Taker archetype, this level of coordination isn’t necessary. But for
companies looking to scale the advantages of generative AI as Shapers
or Makers, CIOs and CTOs need to upgrade their technology architecture.
The prime goal is to integrate generative AI models into internal systems
and enterprise applications and to build pipelines to various data sources.
Ultimately, it’s the maturity of the business’s enterprise technology
architecture that allows it to integrate and scale its generative AI
capabilities.

Recent advances in integration and orchestration frameworks, such as

LangChain and LlamaIndex, have significantly reduced the effort required
to connect different generative AI models with other applications and
data sources. Several integration patterns are also emerging, including
those that enable models to call APIs when responding to a user query—
GPT-4, for example, can invoke functions—and provide contextual data
from an external data set as part of a user query, a technique known as
retrieval augmented generation. Tech leaders will need to define
reference architectures and standard integration patterns for their
organization (such as standard API formats and parameters that identify
the user and the model invoking the API).

There are five key elements that need to be incorporated into the
technology architecture to integrate generative AI effectively (Exhibit 3):

Context management and caching to provide models with relevant

information from enterprise data sources. Access to relevant data at the
right time is what allows the model to understand the context and
produce compelling outputs. Caching stores results to frequently asked
questions to enable faster and cheaper responses.

Policy management to ensure appropriate access to enterprise data

assets. This control ensures that HR’s generative AI models that include
employee compensation details, for example, cannot be accessed by
the rest of the organization.
https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/technologys-generational-moment-with-generative-ai-a-cio-and-cto-guide#/ 10/19
28/9/23, 21:55 A CIO and CTO technology guide to generative AI | McKinsey

Model hub, which contains trained and approved models that can be
provisioned on demand and acts as a repository for model checkpoints,
weights, and parameters.

Prompt library, which contains optimized instructions for the

generative AI models, including prompt versioning as models are
updated.

MLOps platform, including upgraded MLOps capabilities, to account

for the complexity of generative AI models. MLOps pipelines, for
example, will need to include instrumentation to measure task-specific
performance, such as measuring a model’s ability to retrieve the right
knowledge.

Exhibit 3

https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/technologys-generational-moment-with-generative-ai-a-cio-and-cto-guide#/ 11/19
28/9/23, 21:55 A CIO and CTO technology guide to generative AI | McKinsey

In evolving the architecture, CIOs and CTOs will need to navigate a rapidly
growing ecosystem of generative AI providers and tooling. Cloud
providers provide extensive access to at-scale hardware and foundation
models, as well as a proliferating set of services. MLOps and model hub

https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/technologys-generational-moment-with-generative-ai-a-cio-and-cto-guide#/ 12/19
28/9/23, 21:55 A CIO and CTO technology guide to generative AI | McKinsey

providers, meanwhile, offer the tools, technologies, and practices to

adapt a foundation model and deploy it into production, while other
companies provide applications directly accessed by users built on top of
foundation models to perform specific tasks. CIOs and CTOs will need to
assess how these various capabilities are assembled and integrated to
deploy and operate generative AI models.

6. Develop a data architecture to

enable access to quality data

The ability of a business to generate and scale value, including cost

reductions and improved data and knowledge protections, from
generative AI models will depend on how well it takes advantage of its
own data. Creating that advantage relies on a data architecture that
connects generative AI models to internal data sources, which provide
context or help fine-tune the models to create more relevant outputs.

In this context, CIOs, CTOs, and chief data officers need to work closely
together to do the following:

Categorize and organize data so it can be used by generative AI

models. Tech leaders will need to develop a comprehensive data
architecture that encompasses both structured and unstructured data
sources. This requires putting in place standards and guidelines to
optimize data for generative AI use—for example, by augmenting
training data with synthetic samples to improve diversity and size;
converting media types into standardized data formats; adding
metadata to improve traceability and data quality; and updating data.

Ensure existing infrastructure or cloud services can support the storage

and handling of the vast volumes of data needed for generative AI
applications.

https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/technologys-generational-moment-with-generative-ai-a-cio-and-cto-guide#/ 13/19
28/9/23, 21:55 A CIO and CTO technology guide to generative AI | McKinsey

Prioritize the development of data pipelines to connect generative AI

models to relevant data sources that provide “contextual
understanding.” Emerging approaches include the use of vector
databases to store and retrieve embeddings (specially formatted
knowledge) as input for generative AI models as well as in-context
learning approaches, such as “few shot prompting,” where models are
provided with examples of good answers.

7. Create a centralized, cross-

functional generative AI platform

team

Most tech organizations are on a journey to a product and platform

operating model . CIOs and CTOs need to integrate generative AI
capabilities into this operating model to build on the existing
infrastructure and help to rapidly scale adoption of generative AI. The first
step is setting up a generative AI platform team whose core focus is
developing and maintaining a platform service where approved
generative AI models can be provisioned on demand for use by product
and application teams. The platform team also defines protocols for how
generative AI models integrate with internal systems, enterprise
applications, and tools, and also develops and implements standardized
approaches to manage risk, such as responsible AI frameworks.

CIOs and CTOs need to ensure that the platform team is staffed with
people who have the right skills. This team requires a senior technical
leader who acts as the general manager. Key roles include software
engineers to integrate generative AI models into existing systems,
applications, and tools; data engineers to build pipelines that connect
models to various systems of record and data sources; data scientists to
select models and engineer prompts; MLOps engineers to manage
https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/technologys-generational-moment-with-generative-ai-a-cio-and-cto-guide#/ 14/19
28/9/23, 21:55 A CIO and CTO technology guide to generative AI | McKinsey

deployment and monitoring of multiple models and model versions; ML

engineers to fine-tune models with new data sources; and risk experts to
manage security issues such as data leakage, access controls, output
accuracy, and bias. The exact composition of the platform team will
depend on the use cases being served across the enterprise. In some
instances, such as creating a customer-facing chatbot, strong product
management and user experience (UX) resources will be required.

Realistically, the platform team will need to work initially on a narrow set
of priority use cases, gradually expanding the scope of their work as they
build reusable capabilities and learn what works best. Technology leaders
should work closely with business leads to evaluate which business cases
to fund and support.

8. Tailor upskilling programs by roles

and proficiency levels

Generative AI has the potential to massively lift employees’ productivity

and augment their capabilities. But the benefits are unevenly distributed
depending on roles and skill levels, requiring leaders to rethink how to
build the actual skills people need.

Our latest empirical research using the generative AI tool GitHub Copilot,
for example, helped software engineers write code 35 to 45 percent
faster.[ 5 ] The benefits, however, varied. Highly skilled developers saw
gains of up to 50 to 80 percent, while junior developers experienced a 7
to 10 percent decline in speed. That’s because the output of the
generative AI tools requires engineers to critique, validate, and improve
the code, which inexperienced software engineers struggle to do.
Conversely, in less technical roles, such as customer service, generative
AI helps low-skill workers significantly, with productivity increasing by 14
percent and staff turnover dropping as well, according to one study.[ 6 ]
https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/technologys-generational-moment-with-generative-ai-a-cio-and-cto-guide#/ 15/19
28/9/23, 21:55 A CIO and CTO technology guide to generative AI | McKinsey

These disparities underscore the need for technology leaders, working

with the chief human resources officer (CHRO), to rethink their talent
management strategy to build the workforce of the future. Hiring a core
set of top generative AI talent will be important, and, given the increasing
scarcity and strategic importance of that talent, tech leaders should put
in place retention mechanisms, such as competitive salaries and
opportunities to be involved in important strategic work for the business.

Tech leaders, however, cannot stop at hiring. Because nearly every

existing role will be affected by generative AI, a crucial focus should be on
upskilling people based on a clear view of what skills are needed by role,
proficiency level, and business goals. Let’s look at software developers as
an example. Training for novices needs to emphasize accelerating their
path to become top code reviewers in addition to code generators.
Similar to the difference between writing and editing, code review
requires a different skill set. Software engineers will need to understand
what good code looks like; review the code created by generative AI for
functionality, complexity, quality, and readability; and scan for
vulnerabilities while ensuring they do not themselves introduce quality or
security issues in the code. Furthermore, software developers will need to
learn to think differently when it comes to coding, by better
understanding user intent so they can create prompts and define
contextual data that help generative AI tools provide better answers.

Beyond training up tech talent, the CIO and CTO can play an important
role in building generative AI skills among nontech talent as well. Besides
understanding how to use generative AI tools for such basic tasks as
email generation and task management, people across the business will
need to become comfortable using an array of capabilities to improve
performance and outputs. The CIO and CTO can help adapt academy
models to provide this training and corresponding certifications.

https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/technologys-generational-moment-with-generative-ai-a-cio-and-cto-guide#/ 16/19
28/9/23, 21:55 A CIO and CTO technology guide to generative AI | McKinsey

The decreasing value of inexperienced engineers should accelerate the

move away from a classic talent pyramid, where the greatest number of
people are at a junior level, to a structure more like a diamond, where the
bulk of the technical workforce is made up of experienced people.
Practically speaking, that will mean building the skills of junior employees
as quickly as possible while reducing roles dedicated to low-complexity
manual tasks (such as writing unit tests).

9. Evaluate the new risk landscape

and establish ongoing mitigation

practices

Generative AI presents a fresh set of ethical questions and risks,

including “hallucinations,” whereby the generative AI model presents an
incorrect response based on the highest-probability response; the
accidental release of confidential personally identifiable information;
inherent bias in the large data sets the models use; and high degrees of
uncertainty related to intellectual property (IP). CIOs and CTOs will need
to become fluent in ethics, humanitarian, and compliance issues to
adhere not just to the letter of the law (which will vary by country) but also
to the spirit of responsibly managing their business’s reputation.

Addressing this new landscape requires a significant review of cyber

practices and updating the software development process to evaluate
risk and identify mitigation actions before model development begins,
which will both reduce issues and ensure the process doesn’t slow down.
Proven risk-mitigation actions for hallucinations can include adjusting the
level of creativity (known as the “temperature”) of a model when it
generates responses; augmenting the model with relevant internal data
to provide more context; using libraries that impose guardrails on what
can be generated; using “moderation” models to check outputs; and
https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/technologys-generational-moment-with-generative-ai-a-cio-and-cto-guide#/ 17/19
28/9/23, 21:55 A CIO and CTO technology guide to generative AI | McKinsey

adding clear disclaimers. Early generative AI use cases should focus on

areas where the cost of error is low, to allow the organization to work
through inevitable setbacks and incorporate learnings.

To protect data privacy, it will be critical to establish and enforce sensitive

data tagging protocols, set up data access controls in different domains
(such as HR compensation data), add extra protection when data is used
externally, and include privacy safeguards. For example, to mitigate
access control risk, some organizations have set up a policy-
management layer that restricts access by role once a prompt is given to
the model. To mitigate risk to intellectual property, CIOs and CTOs should
insist that providers of foundation models maintain transparency
regarding the IP (data sources, licensing, and ownership rights) of the
data sets used.

Generative AI is poised to be one of the fastest-growing technology

categories we’ve ever seen. Tech leaders cannot afford unnecessary
delays in defining and shaping a generative AI strategy. While the space
will continue to evolve rapidly, these nine actions can help CIOs and CTOs
responsibly and effectively harness the power of generative AI at scale.

1. “The economic potential of generative AI: The next productivity frontier,” McKinsey, June 14,
2023.
2. “The economic potential of generative AI: The next productivity frontier,” McKinsey, June 14,
2023.
3. Begum Karaci Deniz, Martin Harrysson, Alharith Hussin, and Shivam Srivastava, “Unleashing
developer productivity with generative AI,” McKinsey, June 27, 2023.
4. Vishal Dalal, Krish Krishnakanthan, Björn Münstermann, and Rob Patenge, “Tech debt:
Reclaiming tech equity,” McKinsey, October 6, 2020.
5. “Unleashing developer productivity with generative AI,” June 27, 2023.
6. Erik Brynjolfsson, Danielle Li, and Lindsey R. Raymond, Generative AI at work, National
Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) working paper, number 31161, April 2023.

https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/technologys-generational-moment-with-generative-ai-a-cio-and-cto-guide#/ 18/19
28/9/23, 21:55 A CIO and CTO technology guide to generative AI | McKinsey

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)

Aamer Baig is a senior partner in McKinsey’s Chicago office; Sven

Blumberg is a senior partner in the Düsseldorf office; Eva Li is a
consultant in the Bay Area office, where Megha Sinha is a partner;
Douglas Merrill is a partner in the Southern California office; Adi Pradhan
and Stephen Xu are associate partners in the Toronto office; and
Alexander Sukharevsky is a senior partner in the London office.

The authors wish to thank Stephanie Brauckmann, Anusha Dhasarathy,

Martin Harrysson, Klemens Hjartar, Alharith Hussin, Naufal Khan, Sam Nie,
Chandrasekhar Panda, Henning Soller, Nikhil Srinidhi, Asin Tavakoli, Niels
Van der Wildt, and Anna Wiesinger for their contributions to this article.

EXPLORE A CAREER WITH US

Search Openings

https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/technologys-generational-moment-with-generative-ai-a-cio-and-cto-guide#/ 19/19