Key Characteristics of AI Leaders

IBM released a new report called AI in Action that highlights artificial intelligence strategies of businesses considered AI Leaders. The report is based on a survey, conducted on behalf of IBM by Harris Poll, of 2,000 companies across the US, UK, India, Japan, and Germany.

According to the findings, of the 2,000 businesses surveyed, 15% reported being far ahead of their peers when it comes to leveraging AI to maximize value across their business. The report defines these businesses as AI Leaders. The remaining 85% of respondents were classified as Learners. "Of the organizations that were considered AI Leaders, two-thirds reported that AI has already driven 25% or greater improvement in their revenue growth rate," said Shobhit Varshney, VP & Sr. Partner, Americas AI Leader, IBM Consulting. "We dove into the data to uncover how these AI Leaders were implementing AI within their businesses that could help others learn from their success."

71% of AI Leaders describe their organizations as being very aggressive concerning making investments in AI, compared to 19% of Learners. AI Leaders were far more likely to express confidence in their ability to access and effectively manage their organization's data to support AI initiatives (61% vs. 11% of Learners). AI Leaders were more likely to report that their C-suite was fully aligned with IT leadership on what it would take to achieve AI maturity (72% vs. 36% of Learners). Further, data found that AI Leaders were 80% more likely to invest in four use cases: customer experience, IT operations and automation, virtual assistants, and cybersecurity. AI Leaders were more than twice as likely to express confidence in their ability to customize their AI efforts to achieve optimal value. (72% of Leaders vs. 33% of Learners) In practice, 61% of Leaders reported using APIs to create their own solutions (vs. 28% of Learners).

The research for this report was conducted online by The Harris Poll on behalf of IBM from 20 February through 24 April 2024. The survey was conducted among IT and business decision-makers in the US, Japan, Germany, the UK, and India. The decision-makers had to possess a deep knowledge of their company's AI-based tools or processes in all their forms and work for large companies with either an annual revenue of more than $500 million or a company size of more than 1,000 employees.