Digital Leaders

In my conversations with executive teams, I keep running into the same misconception: that buying access to a cutting-edge frontier model is itself a strategy. It isn’t. I watch promising AI deployments hit an “invisible wall” over and over again — not because the model underperformed, but because of user friction, unresolved compliance questions, a legal team pulling the handbrake, or results that never quite matched the pitch.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few weeks in discussions with senior leaders about accelerating AI adoption. The same exchange keeps happening. Someone sets out what they want generative AI for and focuses on the work they cannot do themselves. Write the code nobody in the team ever learned to write. Draft the contract clause they would otherwise pay a solicitor for. Digest the hundred-page report nobody has time to read. Each time, I find myself giving the same unwelcome reply.

Agentic AI is rapidly emerging as the next major shift in software engineering. For product teams, the challenge is no longer simply whether to adopt these capabilities, but how to integrate them in a way that is effective, secure and genuinely valuable to customers. I recently had the opportunity to attend AWS Summit London 2026.

When different parts of the organisation report different numbers for the same outcome, it becomes difficult to make confident decisions. It’s a Monday morning and you’re in a leadership meeting reviewing your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and the finance team are reporting a 12% cost reduction, while operations are reporting an 8% reduction for the same period. Both are confident in their figures, but they are using different definitions and assumptions.

Recently, IEG Group was proud to sponsor a challenge at the European Study Group with Industry at the University of Exeter. The event brought together mathematicians, data scientists and researchers from across the UK and Europe to work alongside industry partners on real-world challenges. It created a valuable environment where academic thinking, practical experience and fresh perspectives could come together to explore complex problems.

If we are serious about addressing unemployment at scale, we need to do more than bring employers and jobseekers closer together. We need to fundamentally rethink how work is defined, how people are matched to it, and how potential is realised. Today’s labour market is still built around a relatively rigid, rearward-looking construct: people apply for jobs, jobs are defined by what the last incumbent did, and matching happens based on past experience.

The conversation around how we fund and deliver public good is undergoing a fundamental shift. The new Prime Minister is placing a heavy, deliberate emphasis on the “impact economy” and backed by landmark Office for the Impact Economy, the mandate for cross-sector collaboration has never been clearer. For existing alliances bringing together sectors to drive digital inclusion, moving beyond traditional short-term grants requires a bold, system-wide mobilisation mindset.

For the first time, one department held the near full digital stack: fibre and mobile connectivity; data centres; joined-up public data infrastructure through the National Data Library; the digital capability, delivery and mandate of wider GDS for public service impact and AI; the broader AI Strategy with real money behind it; real firepower within its own ranks. Exciting – no department outside the Cabinet Office has had that much digital potential before.

Over the past year, we’ve seen a noticeable shift in how organisations approach user research. Across both our own delivery work and conversations with clients, AI is increasingly being explored as a way to speed up analysis, manage growing volumes of research data, and deliver insights more efficiently.

I’ve just finished reading the House of Lords Industry and Regulators Committee report, Time is Money: How Regulators Can Support Growth, and it adds to a conversation I think is long overdue: how regulatory systems can better support innovation, investment and economic growth. Regulation plays a critical role in protecting consumers, maintaining standards and supporting trust.