A new era for AI—and a new challenge for leaders  

AI has crossed an important threshold. With the rise of agents that reason and coordinate across systems, agentic AI can now manage multistep processes that once required humans. It’s not just another wave of automation but a step change in how work gets done.

Agentic is already delivering value (in budgeting, merchandising, and enterprise resource planning, among many other processes), but we are early in the journey. What we do know: Leadership teams need to be strategic about where to deploy agents, clear about when to keep a human in the loop, and bold enough to place the bets that move their organizations beyond incremental productivity gains. That requires “bilingual” teams that marry business and technology expertise, and leaders willing to treat this not as a technology rollout but as a business transformation enabled by AI.

We’ve gathered these insights to show what’s now possible across industries. We hope they inspire bold thinking and even bolder action.