In April 2026, numerous corporate executives at this very moment are wrestling with a similar dilemma.
"We signed up for several AI subscription services and had our employees use them, but why is nothing changing?" The answer to this question is surprisingly simple. Because 'adopting' AI and 'changing the way you work' with AI are fundamentally different matters.
A survey conducted by the Deloitte AI Institute between August and September 2025, targeting 3,235 director-level and above executives across six industries in 24 countries, clearly illustrates this gap. Two-thirds (66%) of organizations responded that AI has yielded meaningful results in productivity and efficiency.
However, only 34% of companies are 'deeply transforming' their businesses by leveraging AI. This means the remaining 66% are using AI, but stopping at improving the efficiency of existing methods.
This is the fundamental turning point for corporate competitiveness in 2026. The gap between 'companies that adopted it' and 'companies that changed' goes beyond a simple performance difference, widening into a structural divide that is difficult to reverse in the short term.
The Uncomfortable Truth Hidden Behind Adoption Rates
Looking solely at AI adoption figures, the world appears to have already changed revolutionarily.
In McKinsey's 'The State of AI in 2025' survey conducted between June and July 2025 among 1,993 respondents across 105 countries, 88% of responding companies answered that they regularly utilize AI in at least one business function. This is a 10 percentage point increase from 78% the previous year.
However, the next sentence in the same report holds the key. Approximately two-thirds of the responding companies still remain in the experimental or pilot stage, and only about a third responded that they are scaling AI enterprise-wide. This means adoption has become widespread, but transformation is the story of a minority.
The gap in financial performance connection is even starker. In the same survey, the proportion of respondents who answered that AI utilization affected corporate EBIT (operating profit) was only 39%. Even then, most attributed less than 5% of total EBIT to AI. This means that while 88% use AI, far fewer companies produce results that register on their financial statements.
Why does this happen? The McKinsey report clearly points out the cause. In the analysis of the same 25 attributes, the single factor that had the greatest impact on EBIT performance was 'workflow redesign.' Yet, among respondents using generative AI, the proportion who stated they actually fundamentally redesigned their workflows was only 21%. The majority of companies are running on the exact same old roads even after equipping a new engine called AI.
To summarize: