The New Workflow P E O P L E , AG E N T S , A N D RO B O T S To move beyond minimal gains from AI, some companies are transforming the way they get things done. Here are four examples. Fewer than 40 percent of companies have seen measurable gains from AI—in spite of the fact the 90 percent say they have invested in the technology. While AI-powered automation could unlock $2.9 trillion of economic value in the United States by 2030, realizing these gains requires more than automating individual tasks. The gap may reflect the fact that many projects are still in pilot or trial phases or that organizations are applying AI only to discrete tasks. Instead, companies should consider redesigning entire workflows so that people, agents, and robots can work together effectively. Workflows—multistep processes involv ing collaboration, information exchange, and decision-making—form the backbone of how organizations operate. Most were designed for a pre-AI world, so applying AI to individual tasks within these legacy processes is unlikely to deliver the productivity gains now possible. Redesigning entire workflows, however, may unlock far more. In banking, for example, this would be the difference between offering employees access to a chatbot for ad hoc use and deploying custom agents along- side people in a reimagined process to approve, process, and manage loans more efficiently, with better customer service. Unlocking larger pro ductivity gains from AI will require reimagining workflows along the lines of the latter, rather than taking a task-based approach. by Anu Madgavkar, Sven Smit, Alexis Krivkovich, and Michael Chui, with María Jesús Ramírez and Diego Castresana We analyzed 190 business processes across the US economy to identify where the greatest oppor tunities may lie. About 60 percent of potential productivity gains are concentrated in workflows related to sector-specific domains—activities at the core of each industry. In manufacturing, these include supply chain management; in healthcare, clinical diagnosis and patient care; and in finance, - - - 53 Q UA RT E R _ 0 2 _ 2 0 2 6