What’s Holding Back AI Adoption? Three Insights from Recent Study

Artificial Intelligence (AI) continues to change at warp speed, creating a “pull” versus “push” customer engagement model where a growing percentage of people ‘pull’ the information they want today from platforms like ChatGPT or Claude, making “push channels” like traditional ad/media less relevant. 

It’s not only changing customer engagement and marketing but also has the potential to transform operations and enable innovation of new products and services. Yet across most organizations, adoption is lagging.  So what gives? 

Recently, Slack launched its 2024 Workforce Index Report, which found that while interest is high with 99% of surveyed execs saying they will invest in AI in the coming year adoption at the worker level is still lagging with only 32% of employees actively using AI in their job.  So, what is holding it back? Three things come to mind. 

We’ve Overestimated AI Maturity 

While it’s all the talk, many organizations overestimate their AI maturity, believing they are further along in their AI journey than they are. This overconfidence can lead to complacency and a lack of investment in necessary infrastructure and training. A recent study found that while 57% of leaders believe they are ahead of the competition in AI maturity, only a small proportion have established key best practices, such as robust data governance and security measures for AI. This gap between perception and reality can stall progress and challenge hurdles for the value of AI to organizations. 

It’s Been Hard to Demonstrate “ROAI” 

While leaders are optimistic about AI’s long-term financial benefits, with 85% expecting revenue increases within 3-5 years, this is not translating into business impact with very few companies committing to real P&L impacts from AI to date.  This inability to demonstrate immediate ROI and fully utilize existing AI technologies is starting to hamper future investment. 

The lack of measurable ROI is being driven by the inability of leaders to have true line of sight on both the benefits and actual costs of AI solutions with only 5 of 37 enterprise pilots on average moving to production and only 3 of these delivering successful outcomes. It’s also driven by the lack of incentives at the worker level to fully adopt AI and change the way they work.  According to the Slack study,48% of US workers are uncomfortable sharing how they are using AI in their job due to uncertainty around AI norms, perception that AI is not delivering on the hype, and lack of AI training. 

Changing Human Behavior 

To achieve real transformation and unlock AI’s full potential, companies should be focusing only 1/3 of their efforts on the technology and 2/3 on the organizational change required.  But most companies are doing the opposite, over indexing on standing up new AI models and underlying tech versus getting employees to rethink the way they work.  Without a culture that encourages AI experimentation and incentives that encourage both new and experienced employees to lean in and co-create and own new AI solutions, companies will never increase the number of AI solutions getting to impact and build a sustainable advantage. 

As an industry, especially in pharma, there is a lot to digest as technology continues to evolve. But we must be open to change and see the big picture. When we do this right, we can lead the way to continue to prove AI’s value while ensuring accountability and responsibility in delivering benefits for customers.  Companies that get this right will separate themselves from the pack in the AI-first future. 

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