Ai is no longer just technology but growth strategy

Artificial intelligence has become the backbone of corporate growth strategy: it is a 'strong' message that comes from McKinsey & Company's 'Global Tech Agenda 2026' research, conducted on more than 600 Chief Information Officers and technology leaders and quite indicative of a clear paradigm shift. For 50 per cent of the companies surveyed, a percentage that rises to 54 per cent among the best-performing companies, AI is the investment priority over the next two years ahead of cybersecurity and infrastructure modernisation.

A significant acceleration, in short, which is also reflected in the repositioning of the role of the I.O.C.E., who is increasingly active and involved in the definition of corporate strategy (64% of the top performing companies consider him to be strongly involved). successful CEOs," confirms Giulio Romanelli, senior partner at McKinsey, "are no longer just IT managers, but real architects capable of integrating artificial intelligence and data into decision-making processes to generate concrete and measurable value. This global trend is also evident in the Italia market, where companies are experiencing a growing demand for advanced digital skills, the need to invest in innovative technologies, and the necessity to adopt more agile organisational models'.

The study speaks explicitly of 'rewiring'. Not a simple upgrade of IT resources, therefore, but a real rewriting of the process architecture around data and AI. Leading companies are progressively adopting operating models that follow a 'product' and 'platform' logic, according to which technology delivery is aligned with business strategy to create a unified layer of information, AI tools and decision-making systems that govern processes and workflows. Almost one in ten 'top performing' organisations, according to the report, has already fully adopted these models and this is more than four times the proportion of other organisations. The result of this approach?

Greater speed of execution and a higher Roi on technology investments. Speaking of the latter: half of the IBo's expect to increase their IT budgets by more than 4% in 2026 compared to 2025, while 28% of performing companies are aiming for increases of more than 10%. The logical thread driving innovation spending, as McKinsey points out, is shifting the focus from efficiency to organisational speed: modernising the infrastructure, in other words, is no longer enough, because technology (and AI in particular) must speed up the way a company decides, produces and evolves. 'The Italia context,' Romanelli further notes, 'is characterised by a strong presence of SMEs with heterogeneous levels of digitalisation and is faced with the need to accelerate its transformation path compared to more mature markets and the opportunity to make a quantum leap in digitalisation and competitiveness.

The most disruptive face of this new growth architecture is undoubtedly agent-based Ai, a resource in which the most virtuous companies are investing heavily to make it scalable. As the McKinsey report states, however, there is no shortage of difficulties associated with its implementation: a quarter of the top-performing Cio admit that they do not yet have the necessary databases to adopt it in a secure and reliable manner, while almost a third of the entire sample report a lack of dedicated technological skills, as well as various complexities in terms of integration with existing information systems. The real crux of the matter, the experts note, is when it comes to teaching the company's people how to use intelligent agents properly and motivating them to use these tools in day-to-day processes. 24% of top performers, not surprisingly, point to change management as a key challenge in scaling AI within organisations. And this is why the most advanced companies are simultaneously acting on three different levers - insourcing, reskilling and targeted hiring - to overcome this obstacle: almost half of the top performers plan to bring strategic tech skills back in-house within the next two years and another half plan to invest in retraining their internal workforce, reducing the structural dependence on outsourcing that still characterises many less mature companies.