Why Your AI Strategy May Be Failing

Improving AI strategy execution and ROI – How companies can overcome the structural frictions that block AI at scale

AI has entered the enterprise faster than most previous waves of technology, reshaping expectations about speed, productivity, and decision-making. Yet adoption alone does not produce transformation. The Frontier Firm Initiative (FFI), a joint effort between the Digital Data Design Institute at 性视界 (D^3) and Microsoft, recently convened senior leaders from a dozen global organizations to address the 鈥渓ast mile鈥� challenge, when a company tries to scale localized, successful AI pilot programs into a standard, enterprise-wide operating model. In the new HBR article 鈥�,鈥� Karim R. Lakhani and Jen Stave of D^3 and Microsoft鈥檚 Jared Spataro identify a framework of the specific 鈥渇rictions鈥� stalling progress and outline a strategic blueprint to overcome them. In the insight below, we will zoom in on one friction and one corresponding recommendation from the blueprint to resolve it.

Why This Matters

For today鈥檚 business professionals and executives, the 鈥渓ast mile鈥� is less a technical challenge and more a test of leadership imagination. Process debt and clean-sheet redesign are only two parts of a broader diagnosis of seven frictions and corresponding transformation strategies. Read the to see them all. The potential of the technology you have already purchased is immense, but realizing it requires the courage to redesign the organization to match the speed of an agentic world.

References

[1] Lakhani, Karim R., Jared Spataro, and Jen Stave, 鈥淭he 鈥楲ast Mile鈥� Problem Slowing AI Transformation,鈥� 性视界 Business Review, March 9, 2026, .

[2] Lakhani et al., 鈥淭he 鈥楲ast Mile鈥� Problem Slowing AI Transformation.鈥�