Expert insights: forces shaping technology in 2026
Technology will continue to advance rapidly this year, but progress will be measured less by novelty and more by impact and responsibility.
After decades of disruptive innovation, the challenge has changed. Technology is no longer defined by what’s possible but by how to use it at scale and with real, lasting impact.
From healthcare and public services to enterprise software and design, our experts agree that breakthroughs are coming, especially around AI. At the same time, concerns around data quality, security, sustainability, and the impact on humans are becoming impossible to ignore.
In this blog, Tieto Tech Consulting professionals share their expectations for how technology will develop in 2026, where the biggest advances are expected, which trends and challenges lie ahead, and why governance, responsibility, and trust will matter more than ever.
AI will favor prepared organizations
Aaron Whitney, Head of Strategic Growth, Americas, expects 2026 to be defined not just by the pace of innovation, but by how ready organizations are to turn it into impact. As AI scales across the enterprise, the main challenge will shift from building AI capabilities to governing them. As AI agents operate directly on top of production data, organizations will face growing risks around data quality, lineage, security, and explainability. With how much tech enthusiasts talk about AI and its enterprise use cases, task-specific AI agents embedded in workflows remain underhyped. The pace of innovation continues to accelerate, but the gap between prepared and unprepared organizations will widen dramatically. Companies with strong data foundations, governance, and workflow integration will turn AI into real advantage, while others will experience innovation as noise, running fragmented pilots with limited impact.
Aaron Whitney
Healthcare will lead the wave
Anitha Lakshmipathy, Senior Customer Executive, sees healthcare as the sector with the most profound change in 2026. Multimodal AI will increasingly support diagnostics, triage, and preventive care which, powered by digital patient twins and continuous monitoring, will finally become mainstream. Hospitals will use AI not just to support clinicians but to anticipate patient needs, reduce waiting times, and personalize care plans. For all the rapid evolution, one constant remains: innovation only succeeds when people trust it — trust in the data, trust in the ecosystem, and trust in the people building the systems. Transparency and responsible AI practices will become essential for AI adoption in highly regulated environments.
Anitha Lakshmipathy
Intent-based computing will redefine
Denny Royal, Head of Global Design, believes that in 2026, as computing moves from command-based to intent-based, designers must adopt new capabilities such as data science, systems thinking, and behavior design to accommodate for the wide use of AI. The technology itself remains both overhyped and underhyped: major players are caught up in their own hubris, while many organizations underestimate what it takes to truly adopt AI and focus mainly on early efficiency gains. Most are not yet considering how AI could help reinvent their business models. While 2026 will not be the year of fully integrated AI co-workers, the winners will be those who use new technologies to rethink value chains and workflows rather than treating AI as a simple technology purchase.
Denny Royal
Security and sustainability will drive software engineering
Kent Inge Fagerland Simonsen, Senior Consultant, sees the biggest technological shifts in the coming years centering on the security and sustainability of software applications, particularly in security-intensive areas such as defense and the public sector. The focus on security and sustainability is driven by regulation, software supply-chain risks, large-scale outages, and the environmental impact of ICT. AI is somewhat overhyped, while a renewed interest in semi-autonomous robotics is expected. What stays largely underhyped are open-source technologies, such as the BSDs, curl, OpenSSL, GCC, and Kubernetes, that form the backbone of our software and infrastructure. Open-source software and rising abstraction layers will remain driving forces of innovation in software engineering in the foreseeable future.
Kent Inge Fagerland Simonsen
AI in public services will mature
Matti Airas, Lead Business Consultant, sees the most significant public sector breakthroughs in 2026 in high-volume citizen service processes such as automated help desks, permits and applications via automation. This includes AI-assisted customer service, decision-making, application summarization and comparison, and automated decisions where legally permitted. A key challenge for generative AI will be managing unrealistic expectations, as outcomes in 2026 will likely fall short of the hype due to poor data quality and a shortage of skilled experts. AI co-workers and networks of AI agents will collaborate, but data accessibility, structure, and continuous updating will remain major challenges. While generative AI is developing rapidly, innovation will increasingly focus on efficiency and reducing computational and environmental impact. A persistent issue in the tech field remains the shortage of professionals who can bridge technology and business insight.
Matti Airas
Looking ahead
Looking across all perspectives, one thing stands out: success in 2026 won’t come from chasing every new idea, but from getting the fundamentals right: data, human-centered design and trust. Innovation alone won’t be enough. Real impact will come from using technology thoughtfully and connecting it clearly to real human, business, and societal needs.
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