Bryce Hall
McKinsey commentary
Associate partner
The initial wave of excitement and novelty around generative AI is evolving into an intentional focus on how to create value from these technologies. Executives are rightfully looking for a return on their AI investments; in many cases, they are paring back their strategies from trying to apply gen AI everywhere to prioritizing the domains that have the greatest potential.
We’re now far enough into the gen AI era to see patterns among companies that are capturing value. One significant difference is that these companies focus as much on driving adoption and scaling as they do on the up-front technology development. This is not just hand-waving. Instead, they are following specific management practices that enable them to be successful—such as developing a clear road map for scaling, establishing and tracking KPIs, and driving change management by ensuring senior leaders are actively engaged in driving gen AI adoption. The fact that so many companies continue to struggle with these management practices is a testament to the fact that they’re not so simple to get right.
In addition, companies that report capturing value from gen AI are “rewiring” their business processes to effectively embed gen AI solutions while appropriately incorporating human-in-the-loop mechanisms to validate models and outputs and effectively mitigating risks associated with the technology.