Although it is debated, how widely adopted and is it considered definitive? Politecnico di Milano uses references to literary images, i.e. theatrical images Waiting for Godotexplains its relationship with many companies today. artificial intelligence. In fact, a quote from Samuel Beckett’s masterpiece can be found at the beginning of a recently published report entitled “Ai4Innovation – Innovation and Ai in Italian Companies: Gen-Ai and Agentic-Ai between awareness, prudence and action”. “The data shows that despite the technology’s acceleration over the past two years, AI adoption is slowing. Business innovation process It still remains limited. Many organizations observe, wait, and evaluate, but act very cautiously. ”
data
The survey was conducted between February and March 2026 among 85 business organizations across four sizes. turn over. The largest shares are followed by medium-sized companies (with a turnover of 10 million euros to 50 million euros) and large companies (with a turnover of 50 million euros to 1 billion euros), each accounting for 27% of the total. small business (sales less than 10 million euros), accounting for 32% of the sample. Very large companies with sales of more than 1 billion euros accounted for 14% of respondents.
Let’s start with the first question. This asks you to rate your organization’s implementation maturity. GenAi and Agentic Airesponses were aggregated by drawing three profiles. Each of these reflects a gradual stage in the integration of AI into business processes.
At that time, the organization Ai starter (25%), meaning they still approach AI in a sporadic and unstructured way, driven more by personal initiative than by a defined strategy. Or they are i experimenters (49%), i.e., initiated a pilot project in a specific situation. In this case, it is a partial and not yet systematic implementation. “AI supports some activities, but it has not yet entered operational routines.” The last profile is Ai scaler (26%), includes organizations that have passed the experimentation stage, “described by the researchers as having adopted AI for several use cases in a structured manner, with defined governance, clear ownership, and monitoring metrics.”
training and skills
But what is happening in terms of training and skills? Our research here looked at whether and to what extent organizations are aware of the need for development. new skills How do you intend to fill the identified gaps within your innovation team?
