In the latest McKinsey Global Survey on AI we noted a significant year-over-year jump in companies using AI across multiple areas of the business. And while most survey respondents said their companies have gained value from AI, some are attaining greater scale, revenue increases, and cost savings than the rest. Based on our research and experience, this is no accident; how companies build their business strategy, what foundations they put in place, and how they tackle AI adoption in the workplace can all impact their potential for transformation....

Despite the extensive body of research on decision making, it remains a source of great frustration for many leaders and companies. This may be because decision science often zeroes in on the decision-maker deeply examining their biases, anxieties, and instincts. But within organizations, decision making is often a distributed capability. Thousands of choices are made at the exact same time across vast networks of departments and geographies. Setting priorities, allocating resources, hiring and firing, resolving crises — decisions that range from high-risk strategic calls to low-risk tactical dilemmas. ...

Here’s a modern-day retelling of Aesop’s fable of the tortoise and the hare. A $6 billion movie-rental business at the peak of its power abruptly dismisses a two-year-old startup’s offer to merge. Like the hare, the movie-rental business keeps running—in its case, growing for another four years. But six years after that, the business declares bankruptcy, eclipsed by the startup, which launched streaming video. In his new book, co-authored with Erin Meyer, No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings describes in a handful of words the decade it took his company to overcome Blockbuster: “little by little, the world changed and our business stayed on its feet and grew.”...

The rich get richer; the rest play catchup. That describes the innovation achievement gap between companies that have massive resources in AI, data, automation, and state-of-the-art enterprise systems and those that don’t. But for companies struggling to keep up, the real problem may not be the disparities between them and their competitors. Rather, it’s the hidden technological disparities within their own organizations that increase inequalities in talent’s access to automation tools and AI reskilling initiatives that ultimately hinder competitiveness....