By Adam Mills
AI Editor
0
Share
Newsweek is a Trust Project member
See more of our trusted coverage when you search.Prefer Newsweek on Googleto see more of our trusted coverage when you search.
For years, artificial intelligence has promised to transform how companies operate. Now, many leaders are confronting a harder question: how to turn that promise into measurable business results.
"AI Impact Forum," a new discussion series hosted by Newsweek, aims to explore that challenge directly. Led by former Ness Digital Engineering CEO Dr. Ranjit Tinaikar, the series brings together senior executives, investors and operators to examine how AI is reshaping industries—and what executives must do next.
“The last three years have been a lot of talk about AI at the boardroom level,” Tinaikar told Newsweek ahead of the series launch. “But frankly, AI has never really gone past the proof-of-concept stage. Very few organizations have truly scaled AI into successful business outcomes.”
Read More on AI
The forum will explore the distance between AI’s potential and the practical work required to turn it into sustained business results.
The pace of change in AI may soon force companies to confront decisions they have been able to delay.
“Recent advances by AI providers suggest that 2026 may be an inflection point where people who have been sitting on the sidelines no longer have that option,” he said.
According to Tinaikar, many executives are still grappling with the practical realities of adopting AI across large organizations.
“Most senior leaders are not knowledgeable enough to understand how to identify the right use cases for AI and then deploy them at scale,” he said.
Part of the challenge lies in the technology infrastructure many companies already depend on. Much of it was built long before AI became central to business strategy.
“A lot of existing technology is legacy technology and is not naturally suited to incorporating these advances,” Tinaikar said. “Organizations often have to invest significantly in modernizing their technology before they can capture the full impact of AI.”
Even when companies successfully build AI systems, another hurdle emerges: implementation.
“You could build an AI solution,” Tinaikar said, “but actually deploying it across the organization is a deployment challenge many companies are struggling with.”
AI is also lowering barriers to entry across industries—allowing new competitors to emerge faster and challenge established business models.
“AI is fundamentally transforming the barriers to entry for new products and services,” he said. “An AI-first company could completely wipe out certain businesses.”
For incumbent companies, that creates a difficult question about how to adopt disruptive technologies without undermining existing revenue streams.
“How do you adapt without cannibalizing your existing products and services—and yet still innovate?” Tinaikar said.
Those tensions—between opportunity and disruption, innovation and self-cannibalization—sit at the center of the forum’s discussions.
Rather than focusing on technical breakthroughs or product announcements, the series explores the strategic choices that leaders must make as AI moves deeper into the enterprise.
Tinaikar frames those decisions around two questions.
The first is “where to play.” As AI reshapes industries, leaders must determine where growth will emerge—and where risk is accelerating.
The second is “how to play.” That includes rethinking operating models, pricing structures, talent strategies and go-to-market approaches for an AI-driven economy.
...
The inaugural discussion, “Is the IT Services Industry Going Extinct?” will take place on April 9 at 10 a.m. ET. The session will feature Francisco D’Souza, co-founder and managing partner at Recognize and former CEO of Cognizant, discussing how AI could reshape the IT services industry. Future sessions will expand the lens to other sectors—including manufacturing, financial services and global markets—while continuing to focus on real-world execution.
Tinaikar says the goal is to create a forum where business leaders can discuss how AI is actually being deployed inside organizations.
“What we’re trying to do is cut through the hype and bring practical execution experience to the conversation,” he said.
Register for the webinar, for free, today.
View 0 Comments
Submit Correction
View Editorial & AI Guidelines