This is an interesting question - I am a CTO at >1B tech company and there is no doubt that part of my role is exactly this - Technology Strategy.
How do I do it?
(1) It is my job to be familiar with a wide range of technologies, which might include tech stacks, but us mostly tech offerings. The tech offerings means lots of meetings with companies that build tech that we might use. Some of those are useful, most are painful.
(2) Actually using technology - IMHO - This is one of the most important aspects of the CTO job. I code all the time, but not for any of our products or operations. I code to learn so I can help make better decisions. We use Kafka for instance, and when we first started using it I built a cluster in my homelab so I had a better idea how it worked. The same with Hadoop, Cassendra, and a few different flavors of Kubernetes. The T in CTO is for 'technology', but it really should be for 'technical'.
(3) Perhaps the single most important thing - I try to hire people that are much smarter than I am, always. The amount I learn from people that are smarter/faster/better is many orders or magnitude greater and more valuable than the reverse.
(4) All the rest of the CTO job needs to support this - so budgeting, head count plans, spending strategy, patents and IP, roadmaps, decisions, etc. All of these details have to roll up and hopefully support a strategy.
How do I do it?
(1) It is my job to be familiar with a wide range of technologies, which might include tech stacks, but us mostly tech offerings. The tech offerings means lots of meetings with companies that build tech that we might use. Some of those are useful, most are painful.
(2) Actually using technology - IMHO - This is one of the most important aspects of the CTO job. I code all the time, but not for any of our products or operations. I code to learn so I can help make better decisions. We use Kafka for instance, and when we first started using it I built a cluster in my homelab so I had a better idea how it worked. The same with Hadoop, Cassendra, and a few different flavors of Kubernetes. The T in CTO is for 'technology', but it really should be for 'technical'.
(3) Perhaps the single most important thing - I try to hire people that are much smarter than I am, always. The amount I learn from people that are smarter/faster/better is many orders or magnitude greater and more valuable than the reverse.
(4) All the rest of the CTO job needs to support this - so budgeting, head count plans, spending strategy, patents and IP, roadmaps, decisions, etc. All of these details have to roll up and hopefully support a strategy.