Associate partner
Bryce Hall
McKinsey commentary
Over the past six years as we’ve conducted our annual global AI research, one consistent finding is that high performers take a broad view of what’s needed to be successful. They are particularly strong in staying focused on value, and then rewiring their organization to capture that value.
For example, on strategy, leaders from our analysis are mapping out where the high-value opportunities are from AI across their business domains. Tellingly, they’re not doing this for only generative AI. As excited as we all are about the dazzling new gen AI applications, significantly more than half of the potential value for companies comes from AI applications that don’t use gen AI. They are maintaining discipline in viewing the full range of AI opportunities based on potential value.
That approach extends to all capability areas. In technology and data, for example, high performers are laser focused on capabilities needed to capture the value they’ve identified. This includes capabilities to enable large language models to train on company and industry-specific data. They’re evaluating and testing the efficiencies and speed enabled by consuming existing AI services (what we call the “taker” approach) and developing capabilities to create competitive advantage, for example by tuning models and training them to use their own proprietary data (what we call the “shaper” approach).