Most conversations about data and AI investment start with the technology – the platform, the model, the tool. That’s understandable. It’s also, according to BCG’s own research, focused on the wrong 30%.

The 10-20-70 principle

BCG’s framework for what actually separates a successful AI transformation from a failed one splits roughly into three parts: 10% algorithms, 20% technology and data, and 70% people, processes, and cultural transformation.

Source: BCG, “10-20-70” AI framework

Read that again. Seventy percent. Not the model. Not the platform. The organisation around it.

What this actually means in practice

It means the question worth asking before any data or AI investment isn’t “is the technology good enough” – it’s “are the conditions around it built to use it.” Most organisations never ask the second question, because it’s harder to answer and doesn’t show up on a vendor’s roadmap.

The technology isn’t the diagnosis. The structure, process, behaviour, and relationships around it are.

Where this shows up

In every diagnosis Prospore has run, this pattern repeats in one of six specific, nameable ways – what we call the Six Dysfunctions of Data & AI Value. None of them are technology failures. All of them are organisational.