23/06/2025
Best practices for adoption and scaling can enable value, and companies are beginning to follow them Most respondents have yet to see organization-wide, bottom-line impact from gen AI use—and most aren’t yet implementing the adoption and scaling practices that we know from earlier research help create value when deploying new technologies. In a complementary survey in a set of developed markets, only 1 percent of company executives describe their gen AI rollouts as “mature.” Even though these remain early days for deployment, we are beginning to see the impact when these practices are employed to capture value. We asked respondents about 12 adoptionand scaling-related practices for gen AI and found that there are positive correlations on EBIT impact from each. The one with the most impact on the bottom line is tracking well-defined KPIs for gen AI solutions, while at larger organizations, establishing a clearly defined road map to drive adoption of gen AI also has one of the biggest impacts. Overall, companies are in the early stages of putting these practices in place. So far, less than one-third of respondents report that their organizations are following most of the 12 adoption and scaling practices, with less than one in five saying their organizations are tracking KPIs for gen AI solutions. Respondents working for larger organizations are more likely to report using at least some of these practices (Exhibit 4). Those at larger organizations, for example, are more than twice as likely as their small-company peers to say their organizations have established clearly defined road maps to drive adoption of gen AI solutions (such as through phased rollouts across teams and business units) and to have established a dedicated team (such as a project management or transformation office) to drive gen AI adoption.
How do you use AI, today, now?!
__Probably the most important technology of any lifetime...
By now, there is no serious entrepreneur, even a potential entrepreneur, who does not use AI. I know some companies where it is now mandatory for all employees to show that they use AI tools in their day-to-day work.
One CEO I know told me that he intends to assess all employees on “AI competence within a year, and throw out anyone who is not adapting; too dangerous for us to keep such people!” I was stunned, but I understood exactly what he was saying. This is serious stuff.
There is even one government in Asia where they are planning to give every citizen ChatGPT for free. Now that is serious! One African country has asked Cassava AI to upgrade all its operations for AI! This is happening in various degrees throughout the world right now.
I recently told you about a doctor friend of mine who was quite dismissive until I showed him how AI can help him in his diagnosis; it absolutely blew his mind!
One of the leading AI platform experts in Silicon Valley told me that his platform known as Groq [not Elon Musk’s, which is spelt Grok!] had about 28,000 developers in Europe and 20,000 in Africa. That Africa number shocked him, and me too, because this is a very advanced platform.
__Serves to remind us [all] that amazing stuff is going on across Africa that you don’t know about... Use of AI on our continent is taking off!
The reality is simple: AI is here and there is nothing any one of us can do to stop it. We just have to get up to speed and learn to use it properly [and hopefully also for good, because bad actors will use it for evil as we have begun to see with !]
The other day, I shared an Afterthought in which I recommended a MUST-read book. [I don’t even know the author personally, but I have read his book several times!]. It’s called the “AI-Driven Leader” by Geoff Woods.
What I liked about the book was that it shows you a step-by-step approach to practical things you can do with AI to help you in your work and business. Now for the “smarty pants” amongst you, this might seem quite elementary, but I don’t write for “smarty pants.” They don’t need me... They can just follow Demis Hassabis of DeepMind directly, right?! I want to help young African entrepreneur get going, that is all.
Get that book. It’s time to equip yourself to use various AI tools, and believe me, there are now thousands of them, many highly specialised. Start with something straightforward like Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, or Meta [which is part of Facebook].
Go through the book I recommended which explains how you can position yourself as a “Thought Leader” who has a “Thought Partner”. It shows you how to become a Thinker in your approach to your work.
Take the time to read my Afterthoughts today. Where are you on your own journey? Let's talk.
