Digital transformation expert Rodney Zemmel (McKinsey) sits down with Axios reporter Ina Fried for a candid conversation about the state of AI adoption in businesses and where companies are really seeing tangible results.
Fried notes that the technology is changing rapidly but wonders whether AI has truly moved beyond “autocomplete on steroids”.
Zemmel sees 2024 as “the year that the technology delivered and the humans didn’t”, suggesting a significant lag in organizational adaptation. According to McKinsey’s research only a minority of companies manage to generate real value from generative AI so far.
“What we saw in the research was that pretty much every large company on the planet has an AI transformation”, Zemmel says. But only “30% hit their revenue targets.”
Companies that succeed show a clear focus on a specific domain of their business, rather than merely implementing pilot projects, and they also invest in talent upskilling, Zemmel explains.
Watch the video for details about where AI is proving profitable, including customer journeys, concise virtual experts, creative content generation, and the potential (but often mismanaged) area of coding improvements.
