Most firms can build a demo, but few can own what comes next

Most mid-market firms can build an AI proof of concept. Moving from demo to production is where they stall — not because of technology, but because nobody owns what comes next. Production-ready AI requires defined accountability before go-live: who signs off outputs, who handles failures, who owns the remediation process. Colin Carmichael of the Business AI Alliance puts it plainly: the firms that industrialise AI in 2026 are the ones that treat it as a managed outcome, not an experiment. See the accountability gap in UK mid-market AI infrastructure for the research behind this.