Slalom’s latest AI research points to a widening gap between executive ambition and operational reality as organizations move past experimentation and into enterprise deployment. Based on a global survey of 2,000 business and technology leaders, the report finds that while AI investment and strategic confidence are rising across industries, adoption remains uneven, with shallow integration, fragmented governance, and legacy technology constraining progress. Most organizations have moved beyond proof-of-concept pilots, but many remain stuck in early or mid-stage maturity, particularly where data foundations, security, and operating models have not kept pace with stated goals.
The research identifies six interconnected domains—strategy, data, security, process, people, and value—arguing that weakness in any one area limits progress across the rest. According to Slalom, organizations delivering tangible results are those making deliberate shifts: modernizing core systems rather than retrofitting AI onto legacy processes, investing in workforce capability at scale, and redesigning how work gets done to move beyond efficiency gains toward differentiation. “AI has become a test of leadership as much as technology,” said Ali Minnick, Senior Managing Director of Solutions and Innovation at Slalom, emphasizing that competitive advantage now depends on execution. The findings suggest that closing the ambition-to-execution gap will define which organizations turn AI momentum into sustained business impact.