Value testing after proof of concept, what the Abu Dhabi summit consultants require for automation success

Inside the halls of the Adnic Center in Abu Dhabi, the world’s largest consulting firms put a limit on technobabble, confronting an operational reality that is imposing itself on negotiation tables. At the AI Everything Abu Dhabi 2026 summit, which hosted more than 180 speakers covering strategy, innovation and investment tracks, the views of leading management consultants converged on a decisive fact: technology alone will not deliver the desired economic impact.

Limiting the return to daily operations
The major strategy firms, including Deloitte, PwC, Strategy&, Sia and Boston Consulting Group, participated as sponsors and partners of the event, raising the dilemma of moving from proof-of-concept programs to comprehensive operational returns. In Deloitte’s sessions, which featured Kosty Perrykos, global head of generative AI, and partners Yusuf Barqawi and Sharjeel Ahmed, the discussion focused on the future of AI-enabled governance, the rise of agentic systems, and the evolving relationship between human talent and automation. Barqawi, who leads growth platforms and strategic AI in the Middle East, explained that the organisations that will win the bet are those that give their staff equal attention, ensuring they have the skills and confidence to work effectively alongside intelligent machines.

Leaving the demo phase
We followed, in the second-day sessions of the Abu Dhabi summit, the continuation of this argument among the other consultancies, where Achilles Ditas, partner at Strategy&, discussed building native AI organisations that combine strategy with skill renewal. Khaled Al-Bashrawi, head of AI at Sia, focused on the critical challenge of moving from narrow proof-of-concept models to creating operational value across Gulf companies, while Akram Awad, leader of smart cities at Boston Consulting Group, addressed the need to reinvent firms to keep pace with this acceleration. The common picture reflects a growing conviction that moving from early-stage trials to genuine corporate value is no longer a discretionary option but a prerequisite for business survival in an environment shifting toward automation of complex tasks.

Redirecting spending toward organisational readiness
For those leading digital transformation or managing businesses in the Gulf, Egypt and the Arab East, this shift radically reshuffles operational priorities and budgets. Interest moves away from the number of software licences or isolated models toward measuring the administrative structure’s ability to absorb intelligent agents within production lines and government services without causing organisational confusion. This means that consulting and technology spending will shift toward redesigning daily workflows and training staff to steer automated systems, avoiding the loss of investments in tools that fail at the first practical encounter. Your move as an executive or technical leader is to stop funding showcase projects that lack a clear path to integration into core operations, and to demand that consultants provide realistic adoption plans for human staff before signing software-supply contracts.

The Abu Dhabi summit’s takeaways show that the competitive balance is not linked solely to computing power or the speed of importing models, but to how well an organisation bridges the gap between agentic automation and employee confidence. The organisations that will capture the region’s true economic value are those that begin by redesigning their teams to integrate with AI, before they discover that their advanced software operates in an expensive organisational vacuum.