The evidence behind Ambit Index™
Organisations are measuring AI adoption, AI investment and AI usage. The world's leading research firms are increasingly pointing to a different factor as the determinant of success.
Across McKinsey, KPMG, BCG and PwC, the same conclusion is emerging independently, from four firms that compete for the same work.
The pattern
report established AI ROI
KPMG
Global AI Pulse Q2 2026
June 2026
Adoption is accelerating (the "AI is part of everyday work" stage jumped from 13% to 22% in one quarter), but the share of organisations with established ROI fell in the same quarter, from 8% to 7%.
n=2,145 C-suite and senior leaders, 20 markets. Fieldwork Apr–May 2026.
Value creation is the challenge now, not technology deployment.
organisational readiness beats individual readiness at predicting success
McKinsey
Three Horizons
July 2026
Organisational readiness accounts for 48% of the difference in AI value capture; individual readiness accounts for only 25%. McKinsey names trust in the organisation as the critical factor across all three horizons of the study.
n=750.
AI value is created by the environment people work within, not simply by the skills they possess.
use AI regularly
BCG
AI at Work 2026
June 2026
74% of frontline employees at large organisations now use AI regularly, up 23 points on 2025. But 66% get limited or no guidance on what to do with the time it frees up. BCG's finding: employees with clear direction but limited tools measurably outperform those with strong tools and no direction.
n≈12,000 across 12+ markets.
Adoption is becoming a solved problem. Alignment is not.
more likely to need senior human skills
PwC
Global AI Jobs Barometer
June 2026
At entry level, AI-exposed roles are seven times more likely to require traditionally senior human skills: leadership, creativity, judgement. Openings for these roles have grown 35% since 2019, while other entry-level roles shrank 10%.
1bn+ job ads, 27 countries; the 7x figure is from a US-only analysis of 2.4M entry-level jobs.
Human capability is becoming a strategic asset, not a cost centre.
already see skills eroding
BCG Henderson Institute
Losing Critical Skills
June 2026
Half of leaders already report signs of skill erosion, and only 1 in 10 companies has a strategy for it. BCG calls it "distributed de-skilling": a system design problem, not a talent problem. The skills most at risk (judgement, problem framing, causal reasoning) are the ones leaders value most; the ones that protect against erosion are relational.
n=70 executives.
The capabilities that matter most are often the same ones most at risk.
The emerging pattern
AI adoption is widespread.
AI value remains difficult to realise.
Organisational readiness matters more than individual capability.
Human judgement matters more now.
Those human capabilities can erode if left unmanaged.
Introducing Ambit Index™
What's already measured
What's missing is a metric for the human conditions that determine whether those investments create value.
Ambit Index measures the conditions that enable organisations to navigate change, adapt to AI, and create sustainable value. What gets measured gets managed, and until now, the most important variables in AI transformation have largely stayed invisible.
See how your organisation scores across the human conditions most closely linked to successful AI transformation.
Sources
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