Artificial intelligence: Europe is stepping up the pace, but small businesses are lagging behind
According to the Accenture Barometer, Italia and the major European nations are making progress, but the US nations remain in the lead
Artificial intelligence is not advancing at the same pace across all businesses. Large European groups are catching up with their North American competitors – according to the Accenture AI Progress Barometer – but they are still lagging behind. The study analyses the level of AI readiness among businesses worldwide.
The barometer assigns a readiness score based on: strategy, technology, skills and the ability to redesign processes. North American companies score higher than their European counterparts: 48.9 points compared with 43.1. A significant finding, however, is that over the last six months the gap has narrowed from 6.3 to 5.8 points: an improvement of 1.6 points for European companies compared with 1.1 for North American ones.
According to Mauro Macchi, Accenture’s CEO for Europe, the Middle East and Africa: “Europe is gaining significant momentum in the field of artificial intelligence, driven primarily by the largest companies”
The gap between businesses
The real divide lies within Europe. Very large European companies – those with annual revenues exceeding 10 billion – are now close to the major North American groups (47.4 points compared with 49.5), whilst the smaller ones lag far behind: 40.5 points compared with 48.1.
If artificial intelligence remains concentrated within the largest companies, this transformation risks widening the gap between those who have capital, data, expertise and infrastructure, and those who struggle to develop industrial projects based on AI. The gap between large and small firms stands at 6.9 points in Europe, almost five times that recorded in North America (1.4 points).
