Value in the age of innovation

It emerges from careful match-making

At the start of 2025, the headlines were largely dominated by the ‘rise of AI agents’ - the latest flashy technology. But Gartner’s 2026 report released in October, showed that the new attitude towards AI will be that of strategic application.

Here are a few things we picked up on:

• There are growing concerns about security, compliance and ethics of AI, especially after a year that revealed some glaring weaknesses in generative AI.
• Businesses want minimal pain when it comes to implementation. Their tech teams shouldn’t have to learn an entire syllabus to use AI products.
• There is an increasing emphasis on AI-native platforms, which differ greatly from the approach we’ve seen until now which has been to add AI as an afterthought: add a chatbot, add a recommender.

The business world has (mostly) come to terms with the glaring weaknesses in AI-business applications. This has led to a sobering moment for the business world, where value doesn’t happen ‘automagically’ but emerges from careful match-making.