“Adaptability will win the day in terms of talent”: Thomson Reuters’ CTO on innovation and adopting AI

Joel Hron, CTO at Thomson Reuters, describes his role leading technology for the business information services specialist in one word: dynamic. The breadth of the firm’s activities, from law to tax and onto media, plus the challenges it encounters across these areas, means there’s a huge amount of variety in his role.

“What's exciting to me is the wide range and diversity of problems that we get to tackle each day,” he tells ITPro.

Another factor in the dynamism of Hron’s work is the ongoing requirement to reinvent the company’s brands, products, and capabilities in an age of AI and big data.

“There’s this duality of the role that encompasses maintaining that legacy of trust we have with clients while also rebuilding our approach from the ground up,” he says. “As CTO, I have to operate both of those worlds at the same time, and that's one of the more challenging, but also rewarding parts of the role.”

As an executive with cross-sector experience spanning traditional enterprises and innovative startups, Hron is well-placed to help an established brand embrace innovation and develop AI-enabled products.

He reports to Kirsty Roth, chief operations and technology officer at Thomson Reuters. While Roth oversees operational activities, including procurement, real estate, and technology, Hron focuses on building products.

“That means I’m responsible for all the engineering elements that go into the products that we ship to our customers, as well as our AI and research and development that supports our future builds,” he says.

A timely pivot to AI

Formerly head of AI at Thomson Reuters Labs (TR Labs) and vice president of technology, Hron was promoted to CTO in July 2024. He previously held senior IT roles at Anadarko Petroleum Corporation before becoming CTO at technology specialist ThoughtTrace, which was acquired by Thomson Reuters in 2022. Hron joined as part of the acquisition process.

“My priority was to make the acquisition successful, both for the employees of my prior company, as well as for Thomson Reuters,” he says.

Priorities switched in late 2022, as the merger process was completed, when the first generative AI products entered the market via OpenAI and other big tech players. With his background in AI engineering, it was clear that Hron had the knowledge to make a valuable contribution to his new employer’s moves as head of TR Labs.

“The company asked me to take over the role to lead that organization, which was like the tip of the spear for developing and formulating both our strategy as well as our core early products in the days and months following ChatGPT’s release,” he says.

“It was an exciting place to be. It was apparent that the company needed to reinvent many parts of its products. And some of the leading ideas were coming out of our lab.”

Hron says big achievements during his first two years at the company included leading the development and release of AI-enabled products across legal, tax, and compliance, both internally and externally.

These successes helped shift perceptions within Thomson Reuters about AI’s benefits, such that when his predecessor left the CTO role in 2024, the company’s senior leadership team saw Hron as the perfect fit.

“What was new and different was that we were thinking, ‘Okay, how do we build AI products that are key to the future?’ I felt that I was uniquely placed to bring that awareness to the table in partnership with my leadership team,” he says.

“We didn’t have to create a narrative about how AI would disrupt legal or tax. It was quite apparent that these industries were focal points for that disruption. The market was eager for AI-enabled change, and it was ripe ground for inventing new ways of doing things.”

Today, Thomson Reuters uses a mix of in-house models and off-the-shelf tools to power its AI innovations, with the blend managed and controlled by internal human specialists. The company takes an agnostic approach to large language models. While the frontier labs at big tech firms are making huge leaps in model development, Hron is eager to ensure the firm exploits its proprietary knowledge and assets.

He points to several key achievements so far, including the AI-powered legal research tool Westlaw Advantage and Deep Research, a system that reviews and strategizes similarly to a researcher.

He also refers to progress on talent and culture in the company. As an acquisitive business, Thomson Reuters must absorb talent from disparate organizations.

Embedding AI skills from hiring onwards

Hron has strived to ensure new entrants and existing employees are focused on how they’ll use their capabilities to make the firm more successful tomorrow.

“There’s a wide belief in that thesis, and it has started to change how we hire, recruit, and organize teams,” he says.

“I get a dozen direct messages a day from engineers across the organization who say things like, ‘Look at this cool thing I built.’ There's a spirit that I don't think existed before.”

With this platform for change in place, Hron envisages significant developments during the next 12 to 24 months. While the firm’s AI-enabled products have made a mark, he believes there’s more that Thomson Reuters can do for its customers, especially in competitive areas like law and tax.

“If you release products that shake up the market and move it forward, then you are perceived as an innovative and market-leading company,” he says.

“I want the market to see us like that, and I don't think that's true enough today. Perhaps people can see our innovations in pockets. But broadly speaking, we have work to do, and our success hinges on releasing things that force people to think differently.”

Hron believes the focal point of disruption, even in sectors like law and tax that are ripe for change, is software engineering. He says business model changes in traditional industries will be supported by great engineering.

The cultural change Hron is fostering across Thomson Reuters will help his 5,000-strong team deliver these AI-powered innovations. And he believes access to people with the right mindset and capabilities will give his business the edge it requires.

“Adaptability will win the day in terms of talent. I can't sit here today and tell you that, if we deliver a certain product in 12 months, then we're going to be very successful. I don't even know what that product is today, and neither does anybody else,” he says.

“But if you have people that truly have a level of curiosity and adaptability to respond and learn and deliver innovations quickly and iteratively, then, at the end of the day, you will win.”