Business leaders are asking: What impact will AI have on my organisation, and is our business model threatened by AI disruption? And as these leaders look to capitalise on AI opportunities, they’re asking: Where should we target investment, and what kind of capabilities would enable us to perform better? Cutting across all these considerations is how to build AI in the responsible and transparent way needed to maintain the confidence of customers and wider stakeholders.

These are the strategic questions we’ll be addressing in a series of reports designed to help enterprises create a clear and compelling business case for AI investment and development. While there’s been a lot of research on the impact of automation, it’s only part of the story. In this new series of PwC reports, we want to highlight how AI can enhance and augment what enterprises can do, the value potential of which is as large, if not larger, than automation.

The analysis carried out for this report gauges the economic potential for AI between now and 2030, including for regional economies and eight commercial sectors worldwide. Through our AI Impact Index, we also look at how improvements to personalisation/customisation, quality and functionality could boost value, choice and demand across nearly 300 use cases of AI, along with how quickly transformation and disruption are likely to take hold. Other key elements of the research include in-depth, sector-by-sector analyses.

In this opening report, we outline the regional economies that are set to gain the most and the three business areas with the greatest AI potential in each of eight sectors. Future reports will focus on specific sectors, along with functional areas such as marketing, finance and talent management.