January 21, 2025 — World administration consulting partnership Kearney, and Futurum, a analysis, intelligence and advisory agency, right now collectively introduced the discharge of the 2025 CEO AI Administration research.The research examined management’s stance and standing of organizational AI adoption, implementation and roadmaps – revealing alarming backlash results that CEOs could already expertise.
The research relies on surveys and sit-down interview periods with CEOs of corporations with annual income over $1 billion world wide. The findings handle CEO readiness in notion vs actuality, CEOs’ views on the potential of AI, the administration dynamics over domain-level experience and insightful conclusions on administration of AI roadmaps and decision-making processes.
Heading into 2025, collaborating CEOs agreed to deal with at the moment debated points like AI governance and moral concerns, the arrival of Agentic AI, change administration and workforce dilemmas pertaining to AI adoption.
Not like any earlier technological innovation, AI units cross-industry challenges that transcend the technological customary integration journey. The research discovered that profitable corporations adopting AI discovered it essential to launch vital change-management plans and initiatives. In line with the research, corporations level to constructing cross-functional alignment (62%) and adjusting workflows and processes (63%) as their main hurdles when integrating AI into each day operations. Past cultural resistance, sensible challenges like integrating with present tech stacks (32%) or navigating IP and licensing complexities (24%) typically delay or derail promising initiatives.
Moreover, distinct variations between older established corporations and youthful digital native corporations have been unearthed within the research. Digital native firm CEOs typically describe a fast-follower mindset—operating light-weight pilots to validate AI options and investing closely in analytics-savvy hires. Against this, established organizations usually tend to emphasize “sustained viability” (45% vs. 27% for digital native corporations) and stronger inner alignment (38% vs. 25%), reflecting a longer-term lens that features TCO concerns and historic information migrations.
Some of the telling insights was the early shortcomings of AI implementation amongst corporations, the place the efforts have been particularly spearheaded by the C suite. Knowledge exhibits that 92% of CEOs not seeing tangible AI outcomes insist on main AI technique themselves, in comparison with solely 59% in organizations attaining measurable success. This hole means that centralized, top-down management can hamper domain-level experience and hinder cross-functional collaboration—each crucial enablers of sustainable AI. Interviews additional reveal that when the CEO stays a strategic information moderately than a hands-on supervisor, useful resource allocation and ROI measurement (49% vs. 17% amongst unsuccessful friends) grow to be extra successfully embedded in on a regular basis enterprise practices.
In conclusion and based mostly on the wealthy insights disclosed by way of the CEO responses and participation, Futurum and Kearney managed to develop a considerable CEO playbook for AI which options 5 factors that result in breakthroughs in AI outcomes.
Some key findings from the research:
- CEOs are overconfident and masks organizational under-confidence: Though 78% of CEOs strongly consider of their capacity to information AI, solely 28% of mid-level managers share this optimism about their agency’s total readiness. This mismatch factors to a hidden cultural hurdle: High-down enthusiasm for AI can overlook lingering anxieties about job safety, talent gaps, or inadequate governance on the operational stage.
- Established organizations see marathon, not dash in AI: In comparison with the digital native corporations, established enterprises place heavier emphasis on enhancing buyer satisfaction (76%) and shoring up provide chain resilience (42%) when deploying AI. As well as, 71% weigh whole price of possession over mere upfront spend—underscoring a multi-year view of AI investments.
- The rising vs established divide: Digital native firm CEOs typically described a fast-follower mindset—operating light-weight pilots to validate AI options and investing closely in analytics-savvy hires. Against this, established organizations usually tend to emphasize “sustained viability” (45% vs. 27% for digital native corporations) and stronger inner alignment (38% vs. 25%), reflecting a longer-term lens that features TCO concerns and historic information migrations.
- AI “patch paradox”: solely 19% of CEOs say they actively place AI for transformative progress moderately than near-term features. Whereas most leaders see AI as a game-changer for operational efficiencies or price discount, few have totally mapped out the right way to leverage superior capabilities for higher-impact use instances. That hole partially explains why industries like Vitality, Manufacturing, and Expertise report the best charges of AI success—every nearing or exceeding 60%—as they combine AI into complicated workflows extra readily similar to predictive upkeep and automatic high quality checks.
- Tender demand by clients: Many CEOs report minimal direct strain from clients to undertake AI—solely 24% cite specific shopper requests for AI-based options—but over half acknowledge feeling a powerful inner crucial to organize for AI-driven disruption. Leaders burdened that ready for exterior calls for might go away their organizations behind the curve as soon as shopper expectations shift, which they broadly anticipated them to do quickly. Consequently, regardless of buyer silence, 59% of corporations say they’re actively investing in “foundational” AI pilots to construct up information readiness and upskill groups, aiming to be ready when market pressures inevitably rise.
- Strategic alignment: A hanging 64% of leaders with no formal AI roadmap report minimal returns from their preliminary pilots, underscoring the necessity to tightly anchor AI efforts to core enterprise goals.
- Knowledge readiness and integration: Practically two-thirds of CEOs cite disconnected or low-quality information as the primary barrier stopping AI options from scaling past pilot phases, underscoring how crucial strong information readiness is to any AI initiative. Siloed infrastructures, fragmented know-how stacks, and inconsistent governance all restrict AI’s capability to ship significant insights.
- Change administration: Regardless of solely 39% of high-performing AI adopters citing devoted change administration frameworks as a key success issue, leaders who make investments on this space see smoother rollouts and stronger adoption.
- Efficient AI governance: Solely 22% of organizations with AI governance councils constantly observe bias detection metrics, signaling that oversight continues to be evolving. Whereas many corporations depend on present committees or compliance groups, formal governance frameworks—full with cross-functional councils—show more proficient at curbing dangers like bias, regulatory pitfalls, and moral missteps.
- The Expertise equation: Regardless of energetic recruitment efforts, 57% of surveyed corporations nonetheless lack adequate inner experience to fulfill present AI wants.
This research relies on a mixture of quantitative survey information and qualitative insights from in-depth CEO interviews, providing a complete view of how enterprise leaders are navigating AI adoption. The twin method ensures each breadth and depth, capturing overarching traits whereas delving into nuanced management views that convey the information to life.
The survey element of this analysis included 213 CEOs from organizations with annual revenues exceeding $1 billion. Respondents have been screened to make sure they held vital management roles, similar to regional or world CEO positions, reflecting a strategic stage of decision-making authority. The survey coated a variety of industries, together with monetary providers, manufacturing, retail, and healthcare, and was designed to discover AI adoption throughout varied useful areas and challenges. Latin America, and different areas have been included to supply a worldwide perspective. The survey employed a structured questionnaire with Likert-scale, multiple-choice, and open-ended questions, producing statistically vital information throughout key themes.
Complementing the survey, 20 CEOs participated in in-depth interviews carried out throughout November and December 2024. These 30-minute interviews supplied a possibility to discover particular person experiences, challenges, and methods in better element. The interviews have been structured round core themes similar to AI governance, change administration, integration challenges, and expertise acquisition. Insights from these discussions have been qualitatively analyzed to uncover rising patterns, particular examples, and distinctive views that enriched the broader survey findings.
By combining the quantitative scale of the survey with the qualitative richness of CEO interviews, this research offers a balanced and actionable evaluation of how leaders are approaching AI. The methodology ensures that the outcomes are each statistically strong and contextually grounded, providing priceless insights for organizations navigating AI’s complicated and transformative panorama.
