Why the Gap Is Widening: Key Drivers

Leadership & Ownership Failures

Many companies that lag behind treat AI as a technical side project, often relegated to middle management. By contrast, future-built firms integrate AI into the CEO and boardroom agenda. In these organizations, ownership of AI is shared between business leaders and IT departments, ensuring that AI strategies are not siloed but embedded into core operations.

Automation vs. Business Reinvention

Firms that fail to generate AI value often focus on superficial automation, such as robotic process automation. While this may yield short-term efficiency gains, it rarely transforms the business. The real value of AI lies in reimagining essential workflows—across R&D, marketing, operations, and manufacturing. BCG estimates that roughly 70 percent of AI’s potential value is tied to such fundamental reinvention. Top-performing companies have already deployed 62 percent of their planned initiatives, while laggards have only implemented about 12 percent.

The Rise of Agentic AI

Agentic AI—systems that integrate both predictive and generative capabilities—are no longer theoretical. In 2025, these agents already comprise 17 percent of total AI value and are expected to reach 29 percent by 2028. Among future-built firms, about a third are already deploying such agents, particularly in customer support and workflow orchestration. Among laggards, adoption is almost nonexistent.

However, integrating agentic AI is far from straightforward. It requires companies to redesign workflows, redefine employee roles, and retrain staff to work collaboratively with autonomous systems. This transformation is daunting, especially for organizations that lack agile decision-making processes and change management expertise.

Talent & Capability Gaps

Top-tier firms view AI as a collaborative tool, not a threat to jobs. They invest heavily in workforce transformation—upskilling more than half of their employees and embedding frontline workers in the design of AI-enhanced processes. These firms also build enterprise-wide platforms with shared components like security, model management, and monitoring. They are three times more likely than lagging firms to do so.

A major distinguishing factor is data architecture. More than half of the future-built companies operate on a single enterprise-wide data model, whereas only 4 percent of laggards have achieved that level of integration. The result is faster scaling, lower redundancy, and better performance across AI initiatives.

The 10‑20‑70 Rule of Transformation

One of BCG’s most important insights is what it calls the 10-20-70 rule: successful AI transformation focuses 10 percent on algorithms, 20 percent on technology, and 70 percent on people and processes. Laggards often flip this equation, over-investing in algorithms and under-investing in the organizational shifts required to translate models into value. As a result, even the most technically advanced tools remain underutilized or misaligned with business goals.

The Danger: Falling Irreversibly Behind

The longer companies remain in the lagging majority, the harder it becomes to catch up. AI-savvy professionals naturally gravitate toward organizations where AI is central, not peripheral. As customer expectations shift toward intelligent, responsive services, companies that can’t deliver risk appearing obsolete.

Competitive pressure will also mount. AI-driven firms enjoy cost advantages and feature-rich offerings that traditional players struggle to match. And because foundational capabilities like enterprise data models and shared AI platforms take time to build, each year of delay compounds the challenge. Eventually, catching up may become so costly and complex that it’s no longer feasible.

How to Narrow the Gap: A Path Forward

To bridge this widening divide, companies must first make AI a CEO-level priority. It cannot be confined to IT or innovation labs—it must be tied to clear, measurable business outcomes and guided from the top.

Second, firms need to focus not on automating existing processes but on reinventing them. This often means abandoning legacy systems and designing entirely new workflows where AI is central, not an add-on.

Third, companies should build unified AI platforms and enterprise-wide data models. This reduces duplication, enhances scalability, and ensures that new initiatives can build on existing infrastructure.

Fourth, as agentic AI matures, companies must prepare for its integration with serious forethought. That includes piloting AI agents in high-value processes, retraining employees, and ensuring clear oversight mechanisms.

Fifth, talent investment must be robust and inclusive. Success lies in upskilling broad swaths of the workforce, involving them in solution design, and cultivating a culture of experimentation and adoption.

Finally, organizations should align with the 10-20-70 rule—keeping technology and algorithms in balance with the much larger human and process changes that determine success or failure.

Final Thought: Don’t Let the Gap Become a Chasm

The widening gap between AI winners and the rest isn’t hypothetical—it’s accelerating, and fast. Firms that continue to stumble may not just fall behind temporarily but may lose their relevance altogether.

But there is still time. For those willing to rethink their strategies, realign leadership, and invest deeply in transformation, the path forward is still open. The question is whether they’ll act in time—or watch the future get built without them.