tech
From assistance to execution: How enterprises put AI to work
Two new reports show how AI adoption is spreading across firms and workers—and what frontier organizations are doing differently.
TL;DR
- Enterprise AI adoption is shifting from asking questions to performing tasks, with agentic workflows becoming more prevalent.
- Frontier firms, in the top 10% of AI usage, generate 8.3 times more output tokens per active user than typical firms, a gap that has widened significantly.
- Advanced AI capabilities like Plugins and skills are more frequently used by frontier firms compared to typical ones.
- Agentic AI is rapidly spreading across knowledge work sectors such as legal, sales, recruiting, and marketing.
- Early-career employees exhibit higher AI usage rates than more senior employees, indicating potential for broader organizational learning.
- Leaders can narrow the frontier gap by enabling agentic workflows, connecting AI to company context and tools, and establishing clear governance and review processes.