- Hi, I'm Neeraj Aggarwal.
I lead BCG's business in Asia-Pacific.
- I'm Dylan Bolden.
I chair BCG's Functional Practices.
And we're here today in Davos
where a lot of the conversation has been about AI
and its impact on business and society.
And we're here today to share some questions
that we've been hearing.
- So Dylan, you led the digital practice in North America.
Now you lead our work globally.
Let me ask you a hard question straight up.
What are clients getting right about AI
and more importantly,
what are they not getting right about AI?
- Yeah, it's a great question, Neeraj.
I think what we find is that at this point most companies
have implemented or are trying to implement AI solutions,
but only 11% of companies have actually found the value
that they went after. - [Neeraj] Okay.
- What we find is companies are not focusing enough
on the people agenda.
They're not focusing on the learning agenda
within corporations.
And in fact, 10% of the value from AI comes
from the algorithm, 20% from the tech side
and 70% from the people side of change.
And so focusing more on the people side
is actually where all the value is.
Underneath that there's three key points that we find.
One is it's absolutely critical to make sure
that you know where the value is going to come from.
Two, we make sure
that you look to digital natives around ways of working.
And then three,
and finally you gotta really bring the people strategy
into this work.
What we find is that upskilling and reskilling
of your employees is absolutely critical.
- And in your experience,
clients which are doing this right
are genuinely getting the value?
- Clients that do this right see the value.
But the interesting part
is they have to do all these things to get the value,
not just doing one little piece gets the value.
You need to pull all those levers together
to actually see all the upside.
- So the more you get all together the curve
is not linear, it's...
- The curve is exponential.
Neeraj, there are a lot of misconceptions around AI
and what it does to an organization.
What's something surprising that you've learned recently?
- AI is a lot about efficiency and productivity,
and that happens, right?
But what I have learned is at its best,
it helps improves learning, collaboration and morale.
And look, we are living in a world where talent wants
to work in places where they feel actualized
and learning, collaboration and morale
are vitally important.
So to me that itself is the reason to embrace AI,
leave aside the value creation
and the efficiency gains. - Yeah.
- This world of AI is changing rapidly.
As you crystal ball gaze into the future.
What excites you about it?
- Many things I'm excited about, Neeraj.
I mean, one I'm just in general excited
to see business transform and to really get a front seat
to watch our clients get there.
Two, I'm excited to see more attention
being paid towards responsible AI.
What we see is that 82% of the public
wants to see it. But a lot of the companies are just learning how to do it.
And then I'm also excited
to see work BCG's doing bringing the AI
and the climate agenda together.
- So look, climate and sustainability
is one of the toughest problems
and to be able to do it well,
it needs to leverage the power of data.
You need data in measuring
and then in controlling beyond that.
So let me give you a couple of facts.
So our analysis shows right now that only 9%
of the companies measure their emissions effectively.
And even those 9%, get it off in a margin
of 1/3 to 40 percentage points. - Yeah.
- So if you can't even measure what your starting point is,
it's very hard to decide
where you want to get to. - Right.
- So this is going to be a critical enabler.
And while we talk
about scope one and scope two, the real problem
is scope three. - Yeah.
- And scope three means you need to work
with people beyond your supply chains
on both your procurement side and your end consumers.
And I think data is going to be integral to solving that.
So this is going to get strongly intertwined,
and I'm excited about that. - Yeah.
- Because the progress you're making on AI will,
I think, I feel good about the possibilities
that it can be unleashed.
- Right, it's great.
It's really good to see those two agendas come together.
- Absolutely.