I think this depends on the difference of perspective between startup->fledgling-and-profitable company CTO and Fortune 500 CTO.

I feel like in the case of the later, the priorities are much more in the order of 1) manage business risk wrt technology, and 2) manage organizational processes wrt technology.

Tech is only the thing that gets you to the thing and the usefulness of anything new is either a) readily apparent (like from orbit), or b) can only be brought in from outside talent (failure of priority #2) or learned from falling on your ass (failure of priority #1).

My point being, it is of little benefit in this scenario to spend any time actually learning the latest fad tech.

I agree with that; the bigger the company the more business like the CTO is. I consulted the CTO of a large insurance company: he showed me (and told me) I never really want to become that. I like getting people to make great things that benefit the business; I make myself know about the business, budgets etc. I believe some companies are underestimating tech and what it can do, at any scale; I believe I add value to the bottomline there. Learning new tech is not for the direct benefit of the company/business but it is indirect; I need to know how to talk to people in my teams. When they talk about something new and ask ‘why not this’, I am not the manager that said ‘stfu and work on what we pay you for’; I like to discuss it and I cannot do that if I did not try it. If someone convinces me it is a good idea, then we can do a PoC. I could just ask someone else to do that research and, as companies grow that is inevitable, at this moment however, I think I am doing a good thing.

Maybe you are CTO and I'm not because my brain is not fast enough to keep up. Yes, a lot of it is rehashes of old things, but I keep inter-confusing the old incarnations with the new ones when coding. You can't cross-confuse 2 things if you never met one of them. Plus, its hard to keep enthusiasm up for the 500th reinvention of the wheel. Maybe I'll reinvent stronger coffee; call it "Covfefe 2.0", or "Blockchain Covfefe"...

Yeah I see what you mean: I have something like that; I get enthusiastic because I see people apparently solving things that annoy me. So I go and try them and find they made things worse, usually. Sometimes, however, it is really great and then we start using it.

So can our org pay yours to be our guinea-pigs? :-)