Fourth edition
The Nordic State of AI
The annual Nordic State of AI report provides an overview of the use of artificial intelligence in the Nordic region,
with the goal of offering business leaders, academics, policymakers, as well as anyone interested, a comprehensive
view of the latest changes and developments in Nordic AI.
Nordic Businesses Recognize AI Value, But Investments Lag Behind
Many Nordic companies have already transitioned from thinking about AI as an efficiency tool to seeing AI as a strategic driver. Companies with the highest satisfaction of AI results emphasize the following.
Embrace AI as the tip of the company’s strategic spear
AI technology will impact all industries and understanding how to leverage it will separate the winners from their competitors. There is an opportunity for industry incumbents to transform their companies into industry leading AI-driven companies, as well as for digital native companies to disrupt entire industries.
Deploy AI at the core of products
It is wise to remember that using the same available efficiency tools as competitors will not put a company in the lead. Integrating AI as part of products and services provides the best transformational opportunities with the greatest potential for long-term value creation and competitive edge.
Leverage AI for competitive edge
AI helps improve existing products, when deployed at the core of them, allowing for strong differentiation and improved customer experiences. AI can also be used to innovate and find new revenue streams.
Engage with the AI ecosystem
Many of the measures needed to succeed with AI depend on understanding of the technologies and having access to needed resources. Both of these can be enhanced through ecosystem collaboration.
The role of AI
AI has the potential to provide a competitive edge and generate new revenue streams, mainly when it is deployed at the core of products and services.
While AI is still in its early days, a maturing understanding of how it creates value is evident, signaling a transition from the exploration stage to a more scalable exploitation stage. Approximately 60% of surveyed companies are satisfied, or very satisfied, with their AI results, and the proportion of companies that have some form of framework for assessing the success of their AI initiatives has risen from approximately 25% to 40%. Insufficient investments are now the primary challenge in scaling AI, not a lack of talent.
Biggest challenge in scaling the use of AI
AI deployments and AI experiments
AI adoption
As the importance of AI increases, considerations across the tech stack are becoming more critical
The report explores the types of AI technologies being used and experimented with across different areas of business operations. NLP and Generative AI are widely used in personal productivity and company products. Other technologies like optimization engines, deep learning, and computer vision are more common in the context of technology R&D, production, and manufacturing processes. Cheaping out on AI and compute may make products unreliable and slow, suddenly putting “the plumbing” at center stage.
Investing in AI
The key to continued innovation is an understanding of the investments required for the shift from traditional software to AI
The priorities related to AI development, data practices, and talent nurturing among companies are changing, signalling ongoing maturation in companies’ AI efforts.Maintaining regulatory compliance is becoming increasingly significant as AI moves into the political sphere. Companies need to invest in navigating a complex and evolving regulatory landscape.
AI investments over the next 12 months
Does your company have a framework in place for assessing the ROI of AI.
The Nordic AI ecosystem
With AI maturity comes greater returns
The Nordic region needs to attract talent from outside of the region. To do this, companies must have ambitious AI strategies and offer rewarding and challenging projects for the talent to engage with. The companies most satisfied with the results they are seeing from AI have an overall higher ambition in their AI activities. As they are also more likely to participate in AI ecosystem collaborations, they are great sources of learning for the entire ecosystem.
For all the key findings and insightful expert interviews, read the report
