IBM finds CEOs racing ahead

of their teams in pursuit of

$7 trillion GenAI prize

David Cushman, Executive Research Leader

Generative AI (GenAI) is expected to deliver a 7% rise in global GDP within 10 years,

according to Goldman Sachs—worth broadly $7 trillion. Yet, according to IBM’s survey of
CEOs, there’s a disconnect between the speed with which CEOs want to move and the ability
of their enterprise to take advantage of GenAI. Regardless of your position in your
organization, if you want to get in on the $7 trillion GenAI opportunity (and you should), teams
must work together to fix this disconnect for the technology to reach its full potential.

IBM’s CEO survey found 74% of CEOs say their teams have the knowledge and skills to
incorporate new technologies such as GenAI. But among senior execs beyond the CEO’s
office, there are deeper concerns. Only 30% think their enterprise is ready to adopt GenAI
responsibly, with worries centering around governance and security. Only 29% believe they
have the in-house expertise to adopt GenAI.

© 2023, HFS Research 1

50% of CEOs already integrate
GenAI in products and services
Despite the disconnect between CEOs and
senior teams about readiness and expertise,
50% of CEOs say their organizations are busily
integrating GenAI into products and services in
use cases such as summarizing reports, creating
content, and speeding up code generation.
Almost as many, 43%, claim they also use it to
inform strategic decisions. For all the rush to
find value, many are proceeding without clear
policies. The same IBM survey showed it will be
2024 before even 74% of CEOs issue
organization-wide guidance on GenAI usage.
Enterprises could be setting themselves up for
GenAI failure before they even understand its
true potential.
There should be little surprise that amid the
GenAI gold rush, the haste to proceed may
lead some down tunnels where value is
unproven and risks ill-considered. In line with
HFS Research’s approach to The Generative
Enterprise™, IBM believes organizations must
change how they work to take full advantage of
AI, identifying change management as a critical
part of delivering the enterprise-wide impact of
GenAI. IBM lists seven major GenAI impacts the
C-suite should be considering:
• New and differentiating experiences,
products, and services
• Step-change gains in efficiency and
effectiveness, augmenting human talent
• New technologies, capabilities, and tools
• New organization skills and ways of working
• New partnerships and collaborations
• Legal, regulatory, and compliance issues
• New frameworks to ensure ethical,
trustworthy, and non-biased outcomes
© 2023, HFS Research
Hype may make GenAI sound like a
cure-all, but success is far from
guaranteed
IBM is already delivering against many of the
seven impacts, telling its European Analyst
event in London on June 12–13 that it is already
working with 100 clients on GenAI projects, and
it has established a global cohort of 1,000
skilled GenAI consultants in its center of
excellence. Its experience with an active global
AI client base of 1,250 has provided 21,000
consultants already skilled in AI; IBM is
upskilling this experienced consultant base for
GenAI. IBM Consulting employs around
160,000 in total.
Enterprise leaders should be cautioned: While
the hype may make it feel like GenAI is the
rapid cure-all to everything from staff shortages
to blockages in your value innovation pipeline,
IBM revealed that even with its AI heritage, the
average AI project has just a 70% chance of
success. The industry average is just 54%. Given
the comparative lack of experience with GenAI
across the industry, it is reasonable to assume
the chance of success with GenAI is slimmer
still. We are hearing that because budgets are
still tight in this tough economic climate,
leaders are focusing GenAI on improving
known business processes rather than exploring
net-new value potential, perhaps a
consequence of wasting dollars on metaverse
and blockchain experiments in recent years.
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 The Bottom Line: CEOs must listen to
their teams’ concerns. Winning big with
GenAI requires a holistic approach.
CEOs are right to target the benefits of GenAI. At 7% of GDP, the
opportunity dwarfs the $1 trillion market identified for the metaverse.
But CEOs must listen to the concerns of their teams and work with
partners to access those benefits. It will take a broad approach where
they consider the role of GenAI in every process and way of working
and address governance and compliance issues early. The
opportunity to win with the Generative Enterprise is clear, but too
much haste could make the percentage of AI project failures go
through the roof.

• See also: Phil Fersht and Saurabh Gupta on how IBM Watsonx can
become the beating heart of the Generative Enterprise.

• Coming soon: HFS Research is conducting the first-ever research

into how service providers are supporting the arrival of the
Generative Enterprise.

© 2023, HFS Research JUNE 2023 | 3

HFS Research author

David Cushman
Executive Research Leader

David leads our Emerging Technology

Practice – tracking OneOffice enablers
from automation and AI, to data and
design thinking, integration, process
orchestration, workflow and
intelligence. He is deeply engaged in
research into business value delivered
by SaaS, and also leads our HFS Hot
Vendors program.

Experienced in start-up, scale-up and

large-scale digital transformation
programs, he has led digital
development at the UK’s fastest-
growing media company, founded and
grown digital consultancies across
Europe and worked with world-class
companies as a director in digital
strategy advisory at a tier-1 services
provider.

© 2023, HFS Research 4

 About HFS
Insight. Inspiration. Impact.
HFS is a unique analyst organization that combines deep visionary
expertise with rapid demand-side analysis of the Global 2000. Its
outlook for the future is admired across the global technology and
business operations industries. Its analysts are respected for their no-
nonsense insights based on demand-side data and engagements with
industry practitioners.

HFS Research introduced the world to terms such as “RPA” (Robotic

Process Automation) in 2012 and more recently, Digital OneOffice™
and OneEcosystem™. The HFS mission is to provide visionary insight
into the major innovations impacting business operations such as
Automation and Process Intelligence, Blockchain, the Metaverse and
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