The Growing Divide in Artificial Intelligence Adoption

A recent study by the Boston Consulting Group has revealed a widening gap between elite companies that have mastered the use of artificial intelligence and the majority of companies struggling to extract tangible value from their investments in this field. Only a very small percentage of companies achieve real success, while the rest see minimal results despite significant investments.

Leading Companies in AI

The study shows that only 5% of companies can achieve positive financial results from AI on a large scale. These companies are not just automating but are reshaping and reinventing their operations, allowing them to outperform others. Dubbed as “built for the future,” these companies can achieve revenue growth 1.7 times greater than their lagging counterparts.

These leading companies invest 26% more in IT and allocate 64% of their budget to AI development by 2025, making their investments in this area 120% higher than their slower competitors.

Reasons Behind the Gap

One of the main reasons for this gap is leadership failure in lagging companies. Managers in these companies delegate AI strategies to middle or lower management levels and fail to set a clear vision for leveraging these investments.

Successful companies follow a clear playbook for success, treating AI as a long-term program sponsored by the board and CEO, with ambitious and clear goals. They integrate business and IT departments in a shared ownership approach, which clearly sets them apart.

Focusing on Core Value

Leading companies focus on reshaping core processes that hold the most potential value for AI. It is found that 70% of AI value is concentrated in functions like R&D, sales and marketing, and manufacturing. Therefore, leading companies prioritize reinventing these processes, executing 62% of their AI initiatives compared to only 12% by lagging companies.

The Role of Workforce and Skills

Successful companies place significant importance on developing employee skills and training them to work with AI, planning to develop skills for more than 50% of their workforce, advancing six times more in this field compared to lagging companies.

They also adopt a centralized AI model, allowing them to build shared capabilities for security and monitoring, accelerating deployment and ensuring enterprise-wide scalability.

Conclusion

It is clear that companies falling behind need radical changes in thinking and organization. The Boston Consulting Group recommends adopting the “10-20-70” rule, where 70% of efforts focus on people and processes, 20% on technology, and only 10% on algorithms. The gap in AI investment is more of an organizational and strategic issue than a technical one. As technology advances and leading companies accelerate, the opportunity to catch up is rapidly diminishing.