Competition leads to disruption which leads to investment. 

That’s one way to sum up a recent cross-sector survey conducted by NewVantage Partners, a strategic advisory firm, which found that 92 percent of senior corporate executives report their organizations are increasing their pace of investment in big data and AI, a figure that includes three out of four healthcare executives surveyed.

The aim of the survey was to gauge how big data and AI are accelerating business transformation and the healthcare respondents included big players such as United Health, Aetna, Cigna, CVS Health and Partners Healthcare. 

Among respondents across all industries, when asked about their motivation to ramp up AI and big data investments, 75 percent cited fear disruption from new entrants, and 88 percent said they feel greater urgency to invest in big data and AI.

The fear of disruption was higher among healthcare executives—79 percent—compared with their financial services colleagues (72 percent cited concern about data-driven disruptors).

When asked to identify the principal driver of big data and AI investment, there was uniform consensus across all industries. Companies are united in their view that business transformation and greater agility will enable them to operate more competitively. Ninety two percent acknowledged these as the driving factors, with only five percent pointing to a need for cost reduction.

In the survey report, NewVantage Partners CEO and founder Randy Bean and NewVantage Partners fellow Thomas H. Davenport, wrote, “Is the glass for data, analytics, and AI in large organizations half empty or half full? While there are still signs of emptiness, over all we see a glass that is half full and filling up slowly. Compared to, say, a decade ago, an impressive number of enterprises are data-driven today.”

Across all industries, the number of firms investing greater than $500 million in AI and data analytics initiatives has increased significantly—from 12.7 percent in 2018 to 21 percent of firms in 2019. Likewise, the number of firms investing greater than $50 million has increased from 39 percent in 2018 to 55 percent in 2019.

Overall, 96 percent of executives report investing in AI/machine learning, reinforcing the view that investment in AI has become nearly universal. What’s more, 90 percent of executives report investing in cloud computing and 77 percent citing investment in digital technologies.