The paradox at the core of the AI revolution: The faster we innovate, the slower we grow

Ming Lu is a senior advisory partner at KKR and previously was the executive chairman of KKR Asia Pacific.

To hear Silicon Valley tell it, artificial intelligence will usher in a glorious new era of abundance. But ask the chief financial officers of the world’s largest companies how AI is transforming their bottom line and, per McKinsey’s 2026 State of AI survey, the answer for 88% of them is: “Not so much.”

We have been here before. When the iPhone launched in 2007, pundits predicted a mobile-first transformation of everything. When broadband went mass-market, Businessweek heralded a “New Economy.” When the PC colonized every desk, Robert Solow quipped that you could see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics. Over five decades, waves of digital innovation have delivered spectacular consumer adoption yet continuously declining productivity growth.

I call this the Innovation Paradox: the faster we innovate, the slower we grow.

Two K-shapes, one problem

Technology diffusion in the digital age follows what I call a double K-shaped pattern. The first K-shape is between consumers and enterprises. Smartphone adoption reached 80% of Americans in seven years. Enterprise resource planning systems took 33 years to reach 57% of U.S. firms. Consumer AI usage has surged to 53% of U.S. adults barely three years after ChatGPT’s launch. Enterprise AI in productive deployment stands at just 10%.

The second K-shape is within the enterprise space. McKinsey’s 2026 survey found that 88% of organizations use AI in at least one function, but a mere 6% qualify as “high performers” achieving more than 5% EBIT impact—unchanged from 2025. That 82-point gap is not a technology deficit. It is an organizational transformation deficit. The 6% who succeed are three times more likely to have........

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