Despite the buzz surrounding AI, widespread adoption in German corporations is still lagging. This DLD Future Hub session examines the challenges and opportunities of scaling AI in the corporate world, with a focus on turning potential into tangible results.
Christian Kirschniak (BCG) notes that only 11-12% of German companies have successfully embraced AI at scale, compared to 27% in countries like Denmark. The reasons lie more in corporate culture than technology, he suggests.
“Technology can an be a barrier”, Kirschniak says, “but in the end it’s people. It’s a cultural and organizational perspective that we are struggling with, and we also have a trust issue and an acceptance issue in the whole society.”
Sarah Buerkle echoes the sentiment that “people are just as important as the technology” and points out that there’s a fundamental difference between private AI use and successful deployment in a corporation – in part because enterprise AI faces stricter limitations around security, compliance, and scalability.
For AI adotion to succeed, “I think there needs to be leadership across the entire company”, starting at the top, Buerkle argues.
Michael Würtenberger (BMW) stresses that scaling AI requires breaking down silos and connecting cross-domain expertise. “A single AI solution doesn’t work”, he says. “The topic for us is that we have to maintain how is the link between all that parts of the development, the product, the process, and the production to make AI happen.”
Watch the video for further insights into AI adoption in enterprises.





