Microsoft executives answer eight key questions on how to succeed in the new era of AI at work
While adoption of AI technology is now widespread, impact is not. Many organizations are experimenting and running pilot programs, but far fewer have the operating discipline to become what we call Frontier Firms—companies that scale AI in ways that meaningfully reshape work, decisions, and value creation. According to IDC’s Business Opportunity of AI Survey (August 2025), 68% of all respondents use GenAI and only 22% of organizations worldwide are Frontier Firms.1 These companies are seeing a return on investment in the technology that is several times greater than companies that are slow to adopt.
This gap is why Microsoft developed a newly revised 2026 edition of the AI Decision Brief, a handbook designed to help leaders and business decision-makers embrace the opportunities of Frontier Transformation. It addresses how AI can become a durable source of advantage: where to focus, how to measure value, how agents change workflows, and how trust, governance, and responsibility enable scale. “This is not simply the next stage of technology adoption,” writes Brad Smith, Microsoft Vice Chair and President. “Frontier Transformation is a leadership moment that asks organizations to fundamentally rethink how people, processes, and decisions work together.
We believe that this brief answers the questions many executives are asking about how to stay ahead of the curve. The questions below surface what we’re hearing from business leaders across industries as they plan investments, assess readiness, and look ahead. Each reflects a theme explored in depth in the AI Decision Brief and points to how organizations can begin turning AI execution into lasting impact.
1. How can my company get the biggest impact from AI?
The biggest impact comes when AI changes how the business operates—not just how fast someone answers an email. “Frontier Transformation is a holistic reimagining of business, aligning AI with human ambition to achieve an organization’s highest aspirations and growth potential,” writes Judson Althoff, CEO of Microsoft commercial business.
3 essentials for building a frontier organization
What does this mean in practice? Frontier Firms are leveraging AI to transform customer engagement, core processes, decision-making, and innovation. For them, AI isn’t confined to one team or one tool. Instead, it’s embedded across the enterprise in an average of seven business functions. That’s when the outcomes compound. These organizations are monetizing AI and outperforming slow adopters with roughly 3x higher returns.1 Agents are accelerating that shift because they don’t just make recommendations; they can take action and complete tasks.
2. How do you graduate beyond early wins with AI adoption?
While AI can boost individual productivity—drafting documents, summarizing meetings, and automating the more tedious aspects of jobs—it can do so much more, according to Jaime Teevan, Chief Scientist and Technical Fellow at Microsoft. “The real opportunity is bigger: not just helping individuals work faster, but enabling teams and organizations to work better, together,” she writes.
Bring AI into processes
Most AI initiatives stall for the same reason most transformations stall: teams prove their value in specific use cases, but leaders don’t change the system around them. The model isn’t the bottleneck—processes, decision rights, and trust are. Frontier leaders, on the other hand, pick a small number of priority workflows and redesign them end to end. That’s how you move from “we got a nice pilot result” to “AI is embedded in how we run the business.”
3. How do I identify the priority workflows where AI can meaningfully change outcomes?
“AI integration is often framed as a technical problem: which models to use, how to connect systems, how to mitigate risk,” writes Jared Spataro, Microsoft CMO of AI at Work. “But for most organizations, the real constraint on value is not technology, it’s how work is organized and governed. The bigger challenge is centered on management.”
Frontier organizations don’t ask, “Where can we plug in AI to automate a task?” They ask, “Which workflows most directly affect revenue, cost, risk, customer experience, or speed of decision-making?” Frontier leaders focus on embedding AI, agents, and data directly into those areas of high impact.
4. As AI agents take more action on behalf of employees and teams, how does my role as a leader need to change?
Leadership has become even more important in the agentic era. “When AI systems can plan and execute over many steps, leadership and engineering rigor become the real bottlenecks,” writes Kevin Scott, CTO of Microsoft. “You need teams that are explicit about goals, careful about feedback and evaluation, and thoughtful about where autonomy is earned versus constrained.”
The greatest risks are unclear intent, ownership, and accountability. Frontier leaders get ahead of this by redefining roles and decision rights early. Humans set outcomes, constraints, and success measures, while agents operate within clearly governed boundaries. That means treating agents like new employees or privileged service accounts—with named owners, least-privilege access, continuous monitoring, and regular review.
5. How do you measure the success of AI when it’s embedded across workflows, decisions, and teams—not just individual tasks?
“Early productivity gains from AI are now expected,” writes Alysa Taylor, Microsoft CMO of Commercial Cloud and AI. “But Frontier leaders see beyond those short-term efficiency wins. They understand how AI can also help grow revenue, increase customer acquisitions, reshape processes, and improve operational efficiency.”
Frontier leaders measure ROI the way they run the business: at the workflow and outcome level, not by counting isolated tasks. Yes, they track early productivity signals, but they don’t stop there—they tie AI to business metrics like faster cycle times, higher quality and consistency, better customer experience, lower risk, and faster decision-making.
6. We’re under pressure to move fast with AI. Can we tackle security later on?
Great question! The answer is simple: absolutely not. “The AI opportunity is incredible, but speed without security, observability and governance opens the door to significant risk. By embedding these elements from the start, organizations can innovate rapidly while building and fostering trust,” writes Vasu Jakkal, CVP of Microsoft Security Business.
The moment AI moves beyond pilots and starts touching real data, customers, and decisions, issues with security and accountability can offset gains in efficiency. According to Microsoft’s 2026 Data Security Index, less than half (47%) of companies have fully implemented data security controls for AI. Frontier leaders build observability, Zero Trust security, and clear ownership from day one, so teams can move faster with confidence instead of stopping to clean things up later.
7. How do you scale AI across an organization without losing control or trust?
“Scaling AI is less about deploying tools and more about preparing people,” writes Nathalie D’Hers, Microsoft CVP of Employee Experience. “A workplace culture grounded in a growth mindset is more important than ever.” Frontier Firms embrace continuous learning and agility. This helps teams fundamentally reimagine processes and think bigger.
Crucially, Frontier organizations also pair empowerment with guardrails. They give employees access to AI where work actually happens—through copilots, low-code tools, and approved platforms—so innovation isn’t bottlenecked by a small group of specialists. At the same time, they’re very clear about boundaries. That includes shared governance frameworks, approved data sources, identity and access controls, and observability at every layer. That’s what allows creation to scale safely.
8. How do I balance Frontier Transformation with sustainability?
“AI and sustainability are often treated as separate agenda items, but they are fundamentally connected,” writes Melanie Nakagawa, Chief Sustainability Officer at Microsoft. “Leaders should understand both sides of that equation: the resource footprint of AI as well as the opportunity it brings to help them operate more efficiently, build smarter, more resilient systems, and lower carbon emissions.”
As AI grows, it brings real resource and trust questions about environmental impact, supply chains, community impact, and whether the benefits of AI are broadly shared. The Frontier view is that designing for efficiency, responsibility, and equitable diffusion isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s how you unlock durable growth while avoiding backlash, constraints, and extra work later.
At Microsoft, we’re building out AI infrastructure with sustainability in mind while also using AI as a force multiplier for climate progress by optimizing systems, accelerating materials discovery, and improving resource efficiency.
Next steps to lead in the era of Frontier Transformation
Read the full AI Decision Brief to understand what it takes to lead in the era of Frontier Transformation. The insights, leadership advice, and practical tips found within our brief will help prepare your company to properly utilize and scale a powerful AI strategy. Once you have that knowledge base, you’ll need a trusted, reliable set of AI tools to execute that strategy.
Explore Microsoft AI tools and solutions for your Frontier Transformation.
1 IDC InfoBrief: sponsored by Microsoft, What Every Company Can Learn From Frontier Firms Leading the AI Revolution, IDC # US53838325, November 2025
