From POC to Production: Breaking the AI Stalemate

Insights from Sol Rashidi at the 2025 Data + AI Integration Summit

While the pace of AI innovation has been exponential, enterprise adoption is struggling to keep up. At the 2025 Data + AI Integration Summit, Nexla CEO Saket Saurabh sat down with Sol Rashidi, Chief Data & AI Officer and seasoned enterprise leader at Estee Lauder, AWS, Merck, etc. to unpack what it takes to turn AI pilots into production success.

Here are the key insights from the session.

The Enterprise AI Gap: Too Many Demos, Too Few Deployments

AI is rapidly advancing from foundational models to retrieval-augmented generation, reasoning capabilities, and agentic workflows. Yet many enterprises remain stuck in “proof-of-concept purgatory.”

“Of the 200 AI deployments I’ve led,” said Sol, “only 48 made it into production and are still in use today.”

This isn’t unique to her experience. Industry-wide, over 80% of AI projects stall before production. The biggest reasons?

• High implementation costs
  
• Immature infrastructure
  
• A workforce unprepared to adopt AI tools
  
• Data privacy and security concerns
  

The result: AI is often piloted, but rarely scaled.

Why the Real Bottlenecks Are Human and Organizational

While technical challenges exist, Rashidi emphasized that enterprise maturity is what limits success instead of model performance.

She pointed to three overlooked gaps:

1. Workforce enablement is underfunded. Training, change management, and adoption planning often receive only 10–15% of total project budgets, yet they account for over 60% of success.
   
2. Data governance remains fragile. Enterprises struggle to manage the sheer volume, variety, and velocity of their data, especially with sensitive information scattered across legacy systems and SaaS tools.
   
3. Misaligned expectations. Many teams expect AI to work perfectly, while tolerating high error rates from human processes. AI doesn’t need to be flawless. It just needs to improve on the baseline.
   

How to Choose the Right AI Use Cases

A core theme of the session was that most AI projects fail because they start with the wrong use case. Rashidi’s advice: stop chasing high-profile or glamorous projects and focus on feasibility.

She offered a structured framework:

• Assess organizational maturity in data, infrastructure, and talent.
  
• Evaluate risk and complexity of the business problem.
  
• Use a discernment matrix to determine if AI is the right solution or if simpler automation tools would suffice.
  

“Not everything should be solved with AI,” she noted. “Sometimes, a simpler tool does the job better and faster.”

Use cases that align with a company’s current readiness and risk tolerance are far more likely to succeed.

Don’t Underestimate the Risk of Intellectual Atrophy

Beyond technical challenges, Rashidi warned about a subtle but important side effect of AI: over-reliance.

From copilots writing code to GenAI summarizing documents, people are beginning to outsource thinking, not just tasks.

“We’re not just using AI to help us,” she said. “We’re using it to replace critical thinking. That has long-term consequences.”

Her recommendation?

• Build AI tools that augment, not replace, human judgment.
  
• Encourage cognitive habits like deep reading, writing, and reflection.
  
• Foster a culture that values accuracy, context, and problem-solving, not just speed.
  

She’s now working on a “Human Amplification Index” to help companies measure whether their AI deployments are empowering their teams or eroding capabilities.

What Enterprises Should Focus on Now

The takeaway for business and data leaders is clear: the difference between AI hype and impact is operational discipline.

Here’s some closing advice:

• Invest in data classification and access control. Know where your sensitive data is and who’s using it.
  
• Prioritize workforce preparation. Training, documentation, and adoption support should be core to your AI strategy.
  
• Choose the right projects. Look for use cases that fit your maturity and risk level, not just ones that sound innovative.
  

“Buying an AI license doesn’t make you an AI-first company,” Rashidi said. “Operationalizing AI is about more than just the model.”

Want to hear more from Sol Rashidi?
Her full session with Saket Saurabh is available to watch on demand>>>