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Chasing Native Alpha
How the Best CTOs Focus on What's Most Important
When everyone can build, advantage comes from knowing what deserves to exist.
AI made capability abundant. It did not make advantage obvious.
Scarce technology rewarded organizations that could build. Abundant technology will reward organizations that know what is worth building.
The premise
When every competitor can reach for capable models, coding agents, cloud infrastructure, and increasingly similar technology, producing more software is no longer a sufficient strategy.
The scarce resources become judgment, context, trust, customer intimacy, domain knowledge, coordination, and the ability to recognize what actually matters.
Chasing Native Alpha gives CTOs a practical method for finding the distinctive advantages already embedded in their companies, customers, people, products, data, relationships, and operating history. It also shows how to identify false alpha: proprietary systems, accumulated complexity, impressive activity, and historical strengths that no longer produce differentiated outcomes.
Inside, you will learn how to
- distinguish genuine advantage from competent execution;
- find where customer and employee strengths create disproportionate value;
- decide what technology should remain strategic and what should become commodity;
- recognize where AI erodes an old advantage or amplifies a scarce one;
- position specialists so their strengths compound across the team;
- subtract features and work that dilute the product; and
- move talent, capital, and attention toward evidence of real alpha.
Scarce technology rewarded organizations that could build. Abundant technology will reward organizations that know what is worth building.
Specifications
- Category
- Technology Leadership / AI Strategy
- Series
- Shahid Shah Fieldbooks
- Publisher
- Intellectual Frontiers Press
- Format
- 7x10 fieldbook, 15 chapters
- Website
- shahidshah.com
- ISBN
- Coming soon
- Price
- Coming soon
About the author
Shahid N. Shah is an engineer, inventor, entrepreneur, and technology strategist who has spent decades designing, building, and operating hardware- and software-intensive systems in healthcare, cybersecurity, federal government, and other regulated industries.
He has served as both a full-time and fractional CTO in startups, enterprises, and government agencies. He has founded and advised technology companies, worked on national standards initiatives, and has been awarded dozens of U.S. patents in healthcare technology, digital identity, and software infrastructure.
His work has taken him from writing software and designing architecture to building teams, advising boards and CEOs, launching companies, and living with the long-term consequences of technology decisions. He writes for leaders who want practical operating judgment rather than ceremony.
Reading the book and hiring the author are two separate paths. For fractional CTVO, CTO, CISO, or EiR engagements, see consulting.