Generative AI hogged the tech headlines in 2024. This year, its agentic cousin is all the rage, showing the business world how AI can act autonomously.
Even executives who are racing to implement AI can’t keep up with the pace of innovation, which has simply been faster. This explains why AI maturity scores across global enterprises have fallen since last year, according to research from ServiceNow, a Silicon Valley company that sells cloud-based workflow automation solutions for enterprises.
In the company’s latest report measuring AI maturity on a 0 to 100 scale, the average score dropped 9 points to 35, as enterprises struggle to effectively measure returns on AI investments, find the right mix of talent and correctly plan for AI implementation.
But the report also identified an elite cohort of companies — about 18% of the nearly 4,500 executives surveyed — that lead the pack across five pillars of AI maturity. These AI pacesetters, who averaged a score of 44, follow certain AI best practices at a much higher rate than the overall group.
“There’s a big difference between having a vision and being visionary. It all comes down to why you should do AI rather than how you should do AI,” ServiceNow Chief Innovation Officer Dave Wright told customers in May at the company’s Knowledge 2025 event in Las Vegas.
Pacesetters understand this nuance better than most. They have a vision for what they want their organizations to achieve and use AI as a tool to get there.
Read more to learn the five parts of the pacesetter playbook.