New Research: aibl and Executive Summary RSI Map the "Unspoken Barriers" Stalling Mid-Market AI

aibl (Artificial Intelligence for Business Leaders) is partnering with Executive Summary RSI to produce a new strategic report series, Unspoken Barriers: The Human Dynamics of AI Adoption. The work will surface the cultural blockers that make deals drift and pilots lose momentum.

A series of interviews with mid-market executives and industry specialists sits at the center of the studies, complemented by primary and secondary research, including a semantic analysis of over 6,000 AI implementations and 30,000 LLM queries.

The work pin down the patterns vendors have felt for years but struggled to name: where resistance starts, how it moves through a deal, and the human dynamics that slow technical adoption even when the case for change looks clear.

“Our work so far confirms that the primary competitor in the mid-market isn't always another AI platform; it's one of the flavors of internal paralysis,” said Jim Clark, Managing Partner at Executive Summary. “We’re seeing deals stall not because of technical debt, but because vendors are pitching transformation to a layer of middle management that sees efficiency as a threat to their headcount and relevance.”

aibl and Executive Summary will release the findings over the coming weeks, with the research feeding into aibl’s push to move the market away from noise and toward steady, commercially grounded adoption.

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