When hiring a Chief Technology Officer (CTO), you will be faced with the decision of whether to keep your search within your industry or cast a wider net and bring someone in with a completely different frame of reference.

Both can work. Both can fail. What matters most is understanding which kind of value you’re solving for.

Do the potential innovations brought by diversity of thought outweigh the benefits of industry expertise? That’s the question many firms are asking today. This isn’t about forcing a choice between experience and originality. It’s about understanding the trade-offs, and making a deliberate decision based on your strategic goals.

Industry experience vs. Cross-sector innovation: Which CTO profile delivers?

There are two distinct yet viable profiles I see firms considering for CTO positions:

• The in-industry executive. These are seasoned CTOs who have led transformation in firms like yours, and built their careers solving problems inside the system. Their biggest value lies in operational fluency; they can slot into complex organizations quickly, with a clear sense of what works and what doesn’t. Hire this individual, and you gain hard-won knowledge of legacy stacks, regulatory load and commercial levers.
• The disruptive thinker from outside your industry. These are technologists who have built high-performance platforms in fast-moving, consumer-led or data-intensive sectors. They may not speak the language of financial services, but they bring “new eyes”, and that often means new questions about old processes which can results in innovative, new solutions.

The case for both profiles is strong. The one you choose depends on context. If you’re looking for incremental gains and need someone who knows how to navigate regulatory architecture, in-industry experience may serve you best. But if you’re building a future-facing tech platform, launching new digital products or reshaping the customer journey, someone with fresh thinking and distance from entrenched assumptions can unlock immense value.

What surprises me is how many executive search firms present only one of these routes. My advice is you shouldn’t pick a side before you’ve seen the full picture, I love presenting a truly diverse short list consisting of candidates who bring deep industry expertise combined with candidates who could challenge the status quo of a client’s industry.

Why Hanover runs every CTO search in two directions

At Hanover, we always run our CTO and technology searches along two parallel tracks, because if we don’t surface both options, we’re not really solving the problem you brought us.

First, we look at executive leaders from within financial services; those who have delivered meaningful transformation, led tech strategy across distributed functions, and know how to make change stick in highly regulated environments.

We complement this by identifying profiles from outside your industry. Our team engages technology leaders and product innovators from a variety of sectors, like manufacturing, logistics, retail, consumer technology, even aerospace and Formula One. We’re not looking for domain knowledge, but for transferrable strengths. How have they led in complexity? What systems have they scaled? Where have they introduced automation, real-time analytics, or cloud-native architecture under pressure?

What makes our approach different

Most firms specialize in one of two things: either they focus exclusively on financial services and mine a limited ecosystem of familiar names, or they go wide across sectors, often with little understanding of the compliance and integration issues that may arise.

We do both. We don’t just search under the same rocks as everyone else. We bring you options that other firms don’t, and we do it without losing sight of your regulatory environment, your commercial objectives or the internal buy-in required for a CTO hire to succeed.

The result is choice. Real, informed choice. You’re not forced to select the best option from a narrow pool. You can weigh high-potential outsiders against experienced insiders and decide which path fits your strategy, your culture and your goals. Our aim is to clarify the dynamics of your business and offer candidates who can deliver material impact in ways that match your ambition.

Case study: From Formula One to Asset Management

One of the most compelling examples of Hanover’s two-pronged approach comes from a global asset manager who was hiring for a newly created role: Head of Future Technology.

They didn’t want someone from their world. In fact, they were clear that a candidate from traditional asset management would likely bring the same frameworks they were trying to evolve past. What they needed was someone who thought differently.

We brought in a senior technology leader from the Formula One industry, whose expertise lay in building real-time tech platforms that could aggregate data from multiple sources to make instant decisions. Those capabilities were exactly what our client needed to catalyze change.

Case study: When the right choice was inside the industry

In another search for a global insurance client, we presented two finalists for the role of Chief Data Officer.

One came from Silicon Valley. Having led AI strategy at a multinational data storage company, they were described as “one of the early innovators in the productization of data”.

The other came from a direct competitor. This candidate had a long track record of driving data-led change within the constraints of insurance regulation and had navigated the complexities of underwriting modernization, claims optimization and customer data governance.

The client chose the in-industry candidate because their transformation roadmap was already in motion, meaning they needed someone who could embed quickly. In this case, the familiarity with insurance systems and stakeholder dynamics proved more valuable than experimental thinking.

Helping you make strategic decisions

Hiring a CTO isn’t about choosing disruption over expertise, or vice versa. It’s about knowing where your business is headed and understanding which kind of leader will help you get there.

Sometimes, the most powerful innovators come from sectors no one has considered. Other times, steady transformation needs someone who understands your world back-to-front. Both paths are valid, but unless you can see them side-by-side, how can you make the right call?

That’s the value we offer at Hanover. We bring breadth and depth, helping you compare proven leaders from inside your industry with visionary talent from outside it, so that you make a decision that’s strategically sound for your future.

If you’re searching for your next CTO, let’s have a conversation.