What is the biggest gap between AI leaders and laggards?

Attracting, hiring and retaining AI talent, at 68% among pacesetters versus 10% for other organizations. Talent investment was also the single biggest gap, per ServiceNow's Enterprise AI Maturity Index.

How many companies lack long-term HR plans for AI?

According to the report, 59% of organizations lack long-term HR plans for AI, and 42% of employees say they aren't getting enough AI training. Pacesetters' average ROI was 160%.

What does ServiceNow plan to add to the AIQ next year?

Agentic AI. The measure will turn on what companies are deploying and where, and whether they are realizing actual commercial value.

Top Companies' AI MovesAI Business & IndustryTop Companies AIOct 3, 2026Oct 4, 2026, 06:30 JST

ServiceNow's Diana David: AI gap is talent, not tech

Send on LINE

3 Key Points

What happened
At the Fortune AIQ Summit, ServiceNow's Diana David said the widest gap between AI pacesetters and others is talent: 68% vs. 10% on attracting, hiring and retaining AI staff. Pacesetters are the roughly 21% of surveyed organizations scoring above 60 on ServiceNow's 100-point Enterprise AI Maturity Index, averaging 74 versus 45 for the rest.
Why it matters
The index data David cited suggests that AI leadership is less about buying technology than about operational discipline, talent investment and having a clear strategy, since pacesetters scored 74 versus 45 and also stand out on unified data, AI vision and autonomous workflows.
What to watch
Whether that gap narrows hinges on whether companies actually redesign processes and train staff rather than sprinkling AI onto old ones, David said. She warned she cannot promise another index dip won't come next year, and ServiceNow plans to add agentic AI to the AIQ next year, judging deployment by commercial value.

WHO IT HITSThis lands on HR and L&D leaders at large enterprises who own AI upskilling budgets, and on COOs weighing whether to keep funding broad AI tool rollouts. It also matters to any executive trying to turn an AI pilot into measurable productivity.

Not sure about something? Ask the AI

Questions and answers are published on this page.

Summaries like this, in your inbox every morning.

Get news like this every morning, free

Context & Analysis

Diana David's role as ServiceNow's director of futures, and her self-description as a "forward-deployed futurist," sets up the talk she gave at the Fortune AIQ Summit on Thursday. The companies pulling ahead, she said, are not distinguished mainly by technology. The gap is people — talent investment, upskilling, and what she called operational discipline and transformation.

ServiceNow's Enterprise AI Maturity Index shows a volatile picture. David recalled that when the index started in 2024, the assumption was that scores would rise steadily, but the average fell from 44 to 35 — which she attributed to AI noise not yet filtering into company value — before rebounding to 51 this year. David also described the spread of leadership beyond tech: technology companies took about one in five spots on Fortune's AIQ 75, followed by financial services, with construction and engineering at six and food and health care five each.

What the numbers point to is that maturity may hinge less on how many employees have AI tools than on whether new processes are designed from the start and ownership is assigned. David's pushback on "AI adoption for everyone" is that broad rollout does not equal maturity if it is not paired with training. Whether that holds will depend on whether ServiceNow's planned addition of agentic AI to the AIQ next year shows commercial value, not just deployment.

FAQ

What is the biggest gap between AI leaders and laggards?: Attracting, hiring and retaining AI talent, at 68% among pacesetters versus 10% for other organizations. Talent investment was also the single biggest gap, per ServiceNow's Enterprise AI Maturity Index.
How many companies lack long-term HR plans for AI?: According to the report, 59% of organizations lack long-term HR plans for AI, and 42% of employees say they aren't getting enough AI training. Pacesetters' average ROI was 160%.
What does ServiceNow plan to add to the AIQ next year?: Agentic AI. The measure will turn on what companies are deploying and where, and whether they are realizing actual commercial value.

AI news that matters for your work, delivered every morning.

Pick your industry and the AI tools you use, and get news related to your work every day.

Get it free

Free · 30 seconds with Google · unsubscribe anytimeWhat is AIToday? →

Ask AI

Ask AI anything about this article. The AI reads this article, earlier AIToday articles, and Wikipedia, and cites its sources. Q&As are published on this page for other readers too.