Beyond the Algorithm: Why Culture, Leadership, and Risk Determine AI Success

The technology works. The companies don't.

In 2025, BCG surveyed 1,250 firms across thirteen industries and seven countries about their AI investments. Five percent were seeing real returns — productivity gains in the high single digits to low double digits, new revenue lines, structural cost reductions. The other 95% had spent significantly and gotten little to nothing back. McKinsey's parallel research, MIT Sloan studies, and Stanford's Human-Centered AI Institute have all surfaced the sam...