"Making AI Work": APAC's AI leadership hinges on transforming work, not just adopting AI
New paper by Asia Tech Alliance recommends how organisations can transform AI adoption into lasting productivity and business value by building AI fluency.
Drawing on published research and interviews conducted by the Asia Tech Alliance with economists, industry leaders and policymakers across the region, the paper highlights:
APAC leads AI adoption but business transformation remains limited. Weekly AI usage across APAC has reached 78%*, yet only 7% of organisations have scaled AI across the enterprise*, highlighting a persistent gap between adoption and measurable business impact.
Realising AI's full potential requires more than adoption. Workers using AI for tasks it was less suited to were 19% less likely to produce correct solutions than peers without AI*, underscoring the need to redesign work and build AI fluency through practical application.
SMEs will determine whether AI delivers broad-based productivity growth. SMEs account for around 85% of employment across Asia-Pacific*, yet many continue to face barriers in knowledge, capability and organisational readiness that limit their ability to scale AI transformation.
SINGAPORE, 22 July 2026 – As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly embedded in workplaces across Asia-Pacific, the next phase of the region's AI journey will depend not only on adopting AI tools, but on how organisations redesign work and equip workers to use AI effectively. While 78% of knowledge workers in APAC now use AI weekly*, only 7% of organisations have successfully scaled AI across the enterprise*, underscoring a persistent gap between AI adoption and measurable business transformation.
To help bridge this gap, the Asia Tech Alliance (ATA) today published Making AI Work: A Practical Agenda for APAC Workers and Firms. Developed with contributions from economists, researchers, industry leaders and ATA member companies, the flagship paper synthesises regional research, policy examples and business case studies into a practical agenda for governments, employers and technology providers seeking to translate AI investment into measurable workforce and business outcomes.
The next challenge: turning AI adoption into business transformation
At the heart of the paper is The Fluency-Transformation Framework, which explains why AI adoption does not always translate into business impact. It centres on two critical shifts: from AI literacy to AI fluency, and from AI adoption to organisational transformation. The paper notes that AI fluency is more than knowing how to use AI - it is understanding where it adds value, where it falls short, and how work should be redesigned around the complementary strengths of people and AI. Supporting this, a Harvard Business School field study found that while knowledge workers using AI on tasks where it performed reliably completed 12.2% more tasks and worked 25.1% faster, those using AI for tasks it was less suited to were 19% less likely to produce correct solutions than peers without AI*.
Together, these insights underscore that realising AI's full potential requires workers to build AI fluency through practical application, organisations to redesign jobs, workflows and operating models around the complementary strengths of people and AI, and governments to support workforce transformation alongside AI adoption.
"APAC has embraced AI - governments and businesses across the region are moving rapidly with strategies and investments to realise real value in the technology," said Lih Shiun Goh, Managing Director of the Asia Tech Alliance. "Realising AI's potential will require organisations to reimagine how work gets done, and support workers to apply AI confidently and effectively. SMEs, in particular, are a segment that deserves attention as they play a significant role in APAC economies."
Why SMEs will determine APAC's AI success
The paper also highlights the central role of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), which account for approximately 97% of all enterprises, employ around 85% of the labour force, and contribute roughly 45% of regional GDP across ASEAN.* Yet many face three interconnected barriers to AI transformation: limited knowledge of how AI can be applied in their business, constrained capability to experiment and redesign work, and insufficient organisational readiness to scale successful use cases.
To help SMEs overcome these barriers, the paper recommends:
Closing the knowledge gap by piloting AI Transformation Compacts, establishing a regional multi-stakeholder platform to share implementation lessons, and developing practical APAC case studies that help businesses understand where AI creates value and how transformation happens in practice.
Closing the capability gap by moving beyond AI literacy towards AI fluency through tiered workforce development, making AI maturity assessments and practical implementation guidance more accessible for SMEs, and providing lightweight governance toolkits that support workflow redesign rather than simply meeting compliance requirements.
Closing the readiness gap by strengthening regional support for long-term workforce transformation through shared funding mechanisms and better longitudinal evidence on how AI adoption translates into changes in work, organisational capability and business performance.
ATA will use the paper to support ongoing engagement with governments, industry, academia and civil society through policy dialogues, media engagement, industry events and regional conferences.
Explore the Making AI Work microsite to learn more.
*Citations
1 Boston Consulting Group (October 2025). AI at Work: Is Asia Pacific Leading the Way? APAC Edition. https://www.bcg.com/publications/2025/ai-at-work-is-asia-pacific-leading-the-way.
2 McKinsey & Company (November 2025). The State of AI in 2025: Agents, innovation, and transformation. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/quantumblack/our-insights/the-state-of-ai.
3 Dell'Acqua, F., McFowland, E., Mollick, E.R. et al. (March 2026). Navigating the Jagged Technological Frontier. Organization Science 37(2). https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2025.21838.
4 United Nations Development Programme’s Insurance and Risk Finance Facility (2023). Building MSME Resilience in Southeast Asia https://irff.undp.org/sites/default/files/2024/Nov/building-msme-resilience-in-southeast-asia_0.pdf.