What: The report analyses the impact of AI on industry structure, enterprise value, data centres, geopolitical trading blocs, software, services, business opportunities, and talent.

Why is it important: Adoption rates for AI especially in cloud services, enterprises and technology solutions are high. The report analyses the return on investment for adoption and the changes needed in working processes to create value with AI.

AI adoption is already delivering performance gains in short time frames for specific functions. These include software and product development, customer support, sales and marketing, and back office operations. The capabilities of generative AI are being harnessed to save time, aid documentation and optimise operations. Investing most heavily in automation leads to improved savings and better adoption of new disruptive technologies. Combining automation technologies to create an overarching strategy maximises full adoption and performance. Innovation with smaller models (both open-source and proprietary) along with edge infrastructure is reaching enterprises, nations and institutions. Generative AI is the prime mover of the current AI wave but is complicated by regulatory shifts and the need to adapt business processes to deliver value. Creating proprietary models for specific functions can hence help avoid risks driven by post-globalisation.

Bain & Co. Technology Report 2024