WSI enters the third year of its AI Business Insights research, covering strategy, governance, skills, search visibility, and measurable business results.
WSI opened its 2026 AI Business Insights Survey today, asking business owners whether their AI strategy has kept pace with adoption. The global survey examines AI strategy, governance, skills, and search visibility, and participating businesses will receive a benchmark against similar organizations by size, industry, and region when the findings are published.
AI adoption isn’t the interesting question anymore. Every business can already say yes to it.”
— Valerie Brown-Dufour, President of WSI
This is the third consecutive year WSI has conducted the survey, and it comes as confidence in AI continues to outpace how prepared businesses are to use it effectively. In WSI’s 2024 research, 72% of respondents said AI could help them meet their business goals. By 2025, that number had climbed to 81%, yet only 40% of business owners had completed any formal AI training, even as their own managers (78%) and employees (77%) were already using AI tools day to day.
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The updated 2026 survey looks at businesses across five areas: how coordinated their AI strategy actually is, who owns AI governance and risk, how employees are building AI skills, how well they understand and manage their visibility in AI search, and whether AI is producing results they can measure. Together, these questions move the conversation past whether a business uses AI, toward whether it has the structure to use AI with real results.
“AI adoption isn’t the interesting question anymore,” said Valerie Brown-Dufour, President of WSI. “Every business can already say yes to it. The real test is whether that yes turns into a plan someone owns, whether people know what to do with the tools they’ve been handed, and whether a customer looking for a business like yours can actually find you. That’s the difference between the businesses getting ahead this year and the ones still catching up.”
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