An enterprise's response to existing or emerging products depends upon its approach towards the two terms of machine thinking – artificial intelligence (AI) and cognitive computing. Is your enterprise an early adopter when it comes to leveraging technology to automate enterprise processes, configure chatbots, embed sensors or improve customer experience by drawing insights? Does your company stay on a constant lookout for fresh data sources coming via ever-increasing interactions or does it prefer to observe these changes from the sidelines, not sure of whether to adopt them or not? Three years ago, the C-suite was engaged in a fierce battle to bring disruptive technologies and innovations to the market. But today on an average, the C-suite is less inclined to view competition from outside the industry as a threat and is focusing extensively on searching for innovation externally among partners.

IBM's Alan Cooke says that today's business leaders need to be reinventors with a vision to integrate AI with IoT across their business. All around us in our world today, the convergence of new technologies and intelligent machines is making things smarter and reshaping the future of business. Leading-edge enterprises, both new and old, are leveraging emerging technologies to automate and optimise their business performance. The top achievers are capturing all forms of data from a variety of interconnected devices and using artificial intelligence-based (AI) applications to plumb that data to reach new levels of operational and financial proficiency. They are reinventing industries, extracting valuable insights from the proliferating data, and creating new opportunities and markets for their business.

C-suite executives are making an important discovery: the Internet of Things (IoT) coupled with advanced analytics capabilities such as artificial intelligence (AI) can lead to next-level solutions and experiences. To realize greater value from the network, and to radically transform their business and operating models, industry leaders are integrating AI with incoming data from a vast array of IoT devices. Forward-thinking leaders are building out scalable digital platforms that help uncover new insights about customer behaviors, perform predictive maintenance on key components and enhance yields in manufacturing, agriculture and logistics networks. A new report from the IBM Global C-suite Study Program shows that C-suite executives recognize a strong need to reinvent their enterprises by digitizing communications and interactions. This is part of a shift in focus from product and service innovation toward building superior customer experiences.

If you've been keeping up with the earlier parts of this series, you'll know that Reinventors are agile and future-focused. Reinventors build emerging technologies into their business strategy to help achieve future strategic goals. They prepare for a future of increased intelligence and automation. They understand intrinsically that platforms are the key to better data usage but also new business opportunity. But perhaps most importantly, they are masters at the art of managing change within their organizations, by creating a culture of transparent leadership, open communication and trust.

Technological innovations have radically transformed the business landscape in many ways over the last two centuries, from the introduction of steam power to the market conquest of radial-ply tires. Research by McKinsey & Company and the McKinsey Global Institute shows that digitization is having the same radical impact. In particular, our research shows how digitization can significantly hurt incumbent firms in many industries -- depleting as much as half the revenue growth and one-third of earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) growth of companies that neglect to embrace digital innovations. It is not too late for incumbents to reverse the digital curse and re-create a more profitable growth path if they are willing and able to invest more in digital than their peers and take the offensive by reshuffling their activity portfolios and beefing up remaining activities with new business models. On top of that, incumbents would be wise to choose a "platform play" -- creating value by intermediating in transactions between other parties, such as suppliers and consumers -- because it opens the way to capture more value in disrupted industry chains.

The seemingly boundless possibilities for artificial intelligence (AI) have arguably made it the most important general-purpose technology of our era. Yet the immediate question in many executives' minds has moved beyond the envisioned potential and towards how businesses are successfully implementing and using AI today. To gain insight into this topic, the IBM Global C-suite Study Program interviewed over 3,000 C-suite executives across 20 industries worldwide about their current and planned use of AI. Eleven percent of these organizations (the Reinventors) are using AI in their business today and plan to continue investing in AI. In this report, we examine the Reinventors' strategic and tactical movements and the driving forces that underpin them.