Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer the next big thing. It’s here. It’s now. But how it will impact each of us, personally, professionally, and financially is still something of an unknown.

Business leaders, especially, should neither hold back nor rush in. If they’re not willing, or able, to be pacesetters in adopting AI and generative AI (GenAI), they should follow best practices.

For profit-seeking organizations, GenAI’s bottom-line impact seems unequivocal. A February 2024 study, for example, indicated that companies “using … [GenAI] to unlock efficiency gains [and] improve the customer experience” might be able to boost profits by as much as 2.5% to 5% in a relatively short period of time—months, not years.

The study mentions an energy company that claims GenAI was responsible for a 7% productivity increase among frontline technicians. A biopharmaceutical company indicated that GenAI had enabled it to reduce its drug discovery timeline by 25%. (Experts say the timeline typically ranges from 10-12 years to as many as 15 years.)

Yet, the same study indicated that only a relative handful of the companies surveyed (10%) had moved beyond the pilot stage with GenAI and had begun scaling GenAI company-wide, or at least in a specific function. The remaining companies were either still at the starting gate (40% had taken no action on GenAI) or had gone no further than piloting one or more test projects (50%).