AI Transformation Hurdles in Legacy Industries: Insights from a Cross-Company Webinar

The panel featured Katy George, corporate vice president, AI and work transformation at Microsoft; Matt Sanchez, president and chief operating officer at Yahoo; Durga Malladi, executive vice president and general manager of technology planning, edge solutions and data center at Qualcomm; and Rodrigo Madanes, global next frontier technology and AI officer at EY. Moderated by Newsweek’s Gabriel Snyder and presented by Cognizant, the discussion centered on why many AI projects stall and what concrete steps firms can take to realize measurable value.

Newsweek

Cognizant research cited by Snyder surveyed 1,200 senior business leaders. Only 32 percent reported tangible productivity gains from AI, while about one-quarter said their organizations had paused or discontinued AI deployments. The study also noted that firms with less mature technology infrastructure were 60 percent more likely to halt broader, non-technical AI initiatives.

Newsweek

• Microsoft responded to low adoption by deploying engineers to shadow sales representatives, leading to specialized tools such as “Sales Chat” prompts and AI-driven coaching agents.

Newsweek

• Yahoo ran pilots that required four-to-six weeks of retooling its codebase and development tools before engineers could accelerate work, a “go-slow-to-go-fast” approach that later expanded company-wide.

Newsweek

• Qualcomm emphasized guardrails, traceability, and policy frameworks that let autonomous agents decide optimal execution environments while respecting connectivity, cost, and data-sensitivity constraints.

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• EY advocated a dual-layer leadership model: strategic oversight by business and finance executives combined with an operating group that includes engineering, product, HR, legal, and compliance to pre-empt regulatory showstoppers.

Newsweek

George argued that AI investments must be guided by clear business goals rather than broad infrastructure upgrades, noting that speeding up a single workflow can merely shift bottlenecks. Sanchez highlighted the cultural challenge of altering long-standing professional identities, stressing empathy and the creation of a “no-fault opt-out” for reluctant staff. Malladi warned that without reliable internet or appropriate processing resources, AI workloads may need hybrid deployment models. Madanes warned that regulatory surprises can become “showstoppers” when pilots scale internationally, urging early involvement of compliance specialists.

Newsweek

• “They didn't see it as useful in the flow of their work,” — Katy George, corporate vice president, AI and work transformation at Microsoft

Newsweek

• “It became a kind of go-slow-to-go-fast moment for the company,” — Matt Sanchez, president and chief operating officer at Yahoo

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• “If you only speed up one piece of it using agents, you just shift the bottleneck forward or backward, and you don't actually get better results,” — Katy George, corporate vice president, AI and work transformation at Microsoft

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• “It becomes a showstopper or something really hard that they hadn't foreseen,” — Rodrigo Madanes, global next frontier technology and AI officer at EY

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• “You need to do both of them. Prove every dollar and move fast,” — Rodrigo Madanes, global next frontier technology and AI officer at EY

Newsweek

• “We can't future-proof any one specific job, but we can help you future-proof your career,” — Katy George, corporate vice president, AI and work transformation at Microsoft

Newsweek