CTO Program Comparison

I have seen posts for a Chief Technology and AI Officer Program at both University of Toronto and University of Waterloo. Both are six months, taught by professors, with a certificate at the end. U of T runs theirs mostly online with a few days on campus. Waterloo's is fully online.

It's worth comparing these to what I have been getting out of my CTO round table at Peerscale. Similar goal, very different approach.

The university programs run five to six months, mostly online, taught by business school professors who primarily hold PhDs in Economics. The syllabus is fixed and set in advance. You cover the economics of generative AI, AI adoption, P&L and ROI modelling, leading M&A, and AI governance. It is taught through case studies from companies like Goldman Sachs, Pfizer, and Morgan Stanley, and you work toward set deliverables like a 90 day plan and a board ready deck. You finish with a certificate. The cost is around $15k to $16k for the six months.

At Peerscale, we have ten CTOs who meet in person, once a month, over a good dinner. It's a peer group where we work through whatever is live for people, usually the exact issue someone is wrestling with at their own company right now. One month it's someone halfway through acquiring another company, another it's deciding where AI fits in the business, sometimes it's the personal side of the job nobody warns you about. It's the same ten people every month, so they get to know you. When you bring a problem to the table, you're not setting the scene from scratch. You're getting advice from people who already understand your situation and have lived through the same thing themselves. We also have quarterly dinners with the full Peerscale community of a hundred technology executives in Toronto. Membership is around $2.5k a year, a fraction of the price of either course.

I'm the CTO round table lead at Peerscale. For me, it has been one of the more valuable things I do in the role at Ollon. If you're interested in the round table, please reach out.