A Gartner survey of CEOs and senior executives revealed significant shifts in their thinking regarding people, purpose, prices, and productivity in 2022, specifically on matters of sustainability, workforce issues and inflation.
Source: Gartner (May 2022)
Gartner distinguished research vice president, Mark Raskino says the pandemic has gradually brought several deep societal trends to the surface, including a desire to change the way we work and the fragility of long-distance global supply chains.
“Simultaneously, however, CEOs’ digital business ambition continues to rise, unabated by the pandemic and related crises,” he added.
What CEOs care about and metaverse is not it
Artificial intelligence (AI) is now reported as the most impactful new technology among CEOs for the third year in a row. Conversely, 63% of CEOs see the metaverse as either not applicable or very unlikely to be a key technology for their business (see Figure 2).
Source: Gartner (May 2022)
Raskino opined that in the past, some CEOs embraced new technology ideas perhaps a little too enthusiastically. He noted, however, that in the case of the metaverse, it’s doubtful the respondents who think it very likely to be a key technology for their business are as confident as they appear to be.
“The remaining list of impactful technologies reminds us that ‘new’ is in the eye of the beholder. Neither digitalization nor e-commerce, in second and fourth place respectively, is very new on a relative basis. Yet these are technologies that many business leaders still perceive as novel and disruptive in their situations,” he added.
Environmental joins the top 10
For the first time in the history of this survey, CEOs placed environmental sustainability in their top 10 strategic business priorities, coming in at 8th place – a significant jump from 14th place in 2019 and 20th in 2015.
“As business leaders feel the pressure from key stakeholders to do more on environmental sustainability, they are now treating the needed changes as opportunities to drive business efficiency and revenue growth,” said Raskino.
Three was agreement among 74% of CEOs that increasing environmental, social and governance (ESG) efforts attract investors to their companies. Of the 80% of CEOs who intend to invest in new or improved products this year and next, environmental sustainability was cited as the third-largest driver, just behind functional performance and general quality.
Sustainability also appears as a competitive differentiator for CEOs in 2022 and 2023 – in fact, it is on the same level as brand trust among respondents.
Inflation is a persistent Issue
Among CEOs surveyed, 62% see general price inflation as a persistent or long-term issue. Their top response to inflation is to raise prices (51%), rather than respond with productivity and efficiency (22%). In fact, productivity and efficiency are not even in the top 10 business priorities for CEOs this year.
Raskino posits that there is some complacency around inflation impact. “When asked about the top two sources of competitive differentiation, only 3% of CEOs mentioned price. Gartner expects that may change quite quickly as inflation continues to bite,” he concluded.
