Nelson Advisors featured in Harvard Business Review: The AI Revolution Won't Happen Overnight

Lloyd Price
Jul 9
3 min read

'The AI Revolution Won't Happen Overnight'

Nelson Advisors has been featured in the Harvard Business Review article 'The AI Revolution Won't Happen Overnight' referencing IBM Watson's cautionary tale of promises made with Healthcare AI solutions.

For all of the concern about AI’s biases, we tend to overlook our own, and this might be especially true in enterprise adoption. Enterprise AI isn’t plug-and-play. It collides with outdated systems, regulatory roadblocks, risk-averse corporate cultures, AI talent shortages, and procurement bottlenecks. The barriers aren’t technical, they’re systemic. It took us 100 years to add wheels to luggage, don’t underestimate the forces that balance the pace of technology diffusion.

IBM Watson Health is a cautionary tale. IBM promised to “outthink cancer,” betting big that AI would transform healthcare. But by 2022, Watson was sold for parts, its potential crushed by messy, fragmented medical data, regulatory red tape, and real-world complexity. Hospitals found it unreliable. Doctors found it impractical. Ethical concerns mounted. Watson didn’t fail because of AI—it failed because IBM underestimated how difficult real-world implementation would be.

AI will transform industries, just not at Silicon Valley speed. It will happen on enterprise time: longer, slower, and with far more friction than most expect. Companies that fall victim to bias and ignore these realities will waste resources, overpromise results, and erode trust. The winners in AI won’t be the ones making the boldest claims. They’ll be the ones with the patience to build real, lasting change.

Source: https://hbr.org/2025/06/the-ai-revolution-wont-happen-overnight

https://www.healthcare.digital/single-post/ibm-s-watson-was-once-heralded-as-the-future-of-healthcare-what-went-wrong

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