Every week seems to bring another AI milestone. In 2026 alone, we’ve seen the rise of powerful AI agents that can write code, manage workflows, analyze documents, and increasingly act on our behalf. Adoption by consumers, business buyers, and employees continues to surge.

And yet there’s a widening gap between AI’s promise and the results that most enterprises are seeing. Despite experimentation, few organizations have translated early AI innovation into meaningful business impact. Productivity gains are incremental. Trust remains fragile. Customer experience, particularly in North America, is at an all-time low. For many executives, AI feels both urgent and elusive at the same time.

That tension won’t resolve itself.

AI represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to redefine customer value and establish durable differentiation. It also presents a clear ultimatum: Firms that fail to move decisively risk fading into irrelevance. Experimentation had its moment — what’s required now is committed leadership, sharper customer focus, and a clearer sense of purpose.

Our new report, Accelerate Your AI Voyage, provides insights and guidance for moving forward with clarity and resolve. Based on a survey of 1,500 AI decision-makers and conversations with companies that are accelerating their AI efforts, the report highlights four critical traits and focus areas that set high-adopting firms apart.

What High AI Adopters Do Differently

The organizations that are forging ahead aren’t necessarily deploying more pilots or chasing every new capability. Instead, they’re making more deliberate decisions about where, why, and how AI creates value — starting with their customers.

Compared with their peers, high adopters are consistently:

  • Customer-led. These organizations resist the temptation to keep AI confined to internal use cases. They focus their efforts on creating visible customer value, whether by improving experiences, optimizing marketing, or equipping customer-facing employees with better insight at the moment of need. At a time of widespread AI skepticism, customer value is how trust is built.
  • CEO-driven. In companies that are making real progress, CEOs are more likely to be driving the AI business strategy than any other executive. This top-down approach offers clarity in how AI will change the business and why that change matters to customers. Regardless of who owns execution, leadership alignment around a customer-anchored AI vision is decisive.
  • Data- and platform-ready. Successful firms made foundational investments early — in governance, infrastructure, and shared platforms — and are now seeing those investments pay off. Importantly, readiness doesn’t require decades of work: Many high adopters accelerate progress by working with partners to modernize data and platforms faster than they could alone.
  • High AIQ. High adopters prioritize hiring and developing talent with high AI aptitude, or what Forrester calls AIQ. They take a human-centric, trust-based, and transparent approach to talent upskilling — treating human potential as central to the strategy, not an add-on.

What’s Your AI Why?

For high AI adopters, these traits are reinforced by a strong focus on making four defining decisions. First, their AI why — unique to their business and customers — guides subsequent decisions on where and when to apply AI, along with how to scale it.

Similarly, your company will need its own guiding AI why. Put a stake in the ground about the specific outcomes you want AI to achieve — resisting the urge to default to cost savings and instead anchoring AI to outcomes focused on driving customer value. That, in turn, will drive growth and open more opportunities as you progress.

CEOs: Put Customers At The Center Of Your AI Voyage

CEOs have a narrow but powerful window to direct AI efforts toward creating durable customer value. Seize the opportunity now. Start by changing the prevailing AI narrative from AI as efficiency tool to AI as driver of customer value. Declare visibly and publicly how AI will help your customers. Rally your leadership team around a customer-led AI strategy and establish focused workstreams geared toward using AI to unlock customer value and differentiation.

No AI voyage will always be smooth. There will be roadblocks, trade-offs, and moments of uncertainty. By using customer value as your compass — letting it guide where you invest and what you choose not to pursue — you’ll not only accelerate your AI efforts, but you’ll emerge with stronger trust, clearer differentiation, and a more resilient future.