BCG Edge: What can we expect from the future of work tech and AI?

American consulting firm, BCG, which achieved a global revenue growth of $13.5 billion in 2024, held their annual BCG Edge event in Vienna. 

Throughout the conference, a number of senior leaders shared their thoughts, knowledge, and data on AI, technology and the future of work.

UNLEASH’s Senior Journalist, Lucy Buchholz, attended to uncover exclusive insights and report from the inside.

Is Europe keeping pace with AI?

In a study of 850 C-level executives, four BCG leaders – Michael Brigl, Head of BCG Central Europe; Olivier Scalabre, Head of BCG France; Sylvain Duranton, Global Leader of BCG X; and Matthias Tauber, Head of BCG Europe, Middle East, South America, Africa – took a deep dive into on European competitiveness in 2025.

Their key take home message was clear and consistent: The time for action is now.

As a result, the study found that “European business leaders are concerned but ready to act.”

To reiterate this, BCG outlined five key points: 

1. Competitiveness is declining: 90% of leaders believe it is necessary to stimulate Europe’s commercial interest, with 80% concerned Europe will fade from the history of business innovation if not.
2. Europe will face economic and social consequences: Without action, 72% of its workforce will face reductions.
3. “Liberation Day” was a wake up call: Almost twice as many leaders believe that Europe will take action to improve competitiveness.
4. Increase targeted action: 87% of business leaders said they would increase hiring.
5. Better collaboration: 82% of business leaders are ready to commit their time to serve Europe.

Supporting this, Tauber expressed: “There is broad consensus that competitiveness is declining. So it’s not an option to act on European competitiveness, it is an imperative. 

But if competitiveness declines, what does this mean for HR?

Well, BCG suggests that Europe will face economic and social consequences, with 72% of leaders foreseeing that workforce reductions will become more common, 66% believing businesses will increase offshore operations outside of Europe, and 62% expecting research and development to slow down.

So, the big question is: How do leaders restore European competitiveness?

BCG provides ten top priorities: 

1. Enable emergence of European Champions (83%)
2. Close the skills gap (81%)
3. Reduce tax burden on labor (81%)
4. Increase productivity (80%)
5. Facilitate access to investment and finances (80%)
6. Secure critical supply chains (80%)
7. Decrease energy costs (79%)
8. Standardize infrastructure (79%)
9. New technologies (78%)
10. Simplify regulations (76%)

The report therefore shows that leaders are ready to take – if leaders create the right conditions, such as reducing cost and improving availability of talent, allowing greater flexibility for merger regulations, and shared purchase agreement for critical raw materials.

Duranton added: “The fix is stronger collaboration between the business leaders and policy makers.

“We see this appetite to change that – to collaborate, to spend time. It can make a real difference.

But the window of opportunity is short. We need to act now.”

BCG’s AI masterclass

“Right now, we are on pace to have AI models in three years that are 10,000 times more powerful than they are today,” Matthew Kropp, Chief Technology Officer at BCG X, opened.

“So if you think about how impressive it is that you can use ChatGPT, for example, to ask questions and so forth, think about the kind of progress we’ll see when it’s 10,000 times more powerful.”

This opening statement set the scene for BCG’s AI Master class, held by Krppp, as well as Bastien Parizot, SVP Tech and Digital at Reckitt, Jessica Apotheker, Chief Marketing Officer at BCG and BCG X.

Through the discussion, the trio give a snapshot into what the future of AI will look like, with Kropp suggesting that agents will be powering all of our workflows.

The key thing about an agent is they actually reason about what needs to be done,” he shared.

“So instead of having rules based workflows that are very deterministic and bridling, we’ll have reasoning based workflows that respond to the environment. This will allow us to embed AI into all of our devices.”

The trio continue to share the new AI advancements that are driving a new wave of possibilities for tech acceleration, including realistic videos, autonomous coding, human-like voicebots, reasoning machines and agents and embedded AI.

However, BCG found a slight disparity, as 75% of executives ranked AI and Gen AI as a top priority, yet only 25% are saw significant value from it.

What’s more, only 26% of companies have “cracked the code” on maximizing AI value potential, which has been achieved through focusing on five key factors: Strategic alignment, focus on large-scale opportunities, centralized steering, value driven structures and process redesign.

Continuing on from this, Kropp adds: “At BCG, we talk about the 10-20-70.

“When we think about technology projects, particularly when we think about AI projects. 10% of the effort and impact comes from the algorithms, 20% comes from the software, technology, and systems, and 70% comes from the people, processes and organization.

“Oftentimes we enterprises forget, when it’s a technology project, that we focus on the tech, they forget about the change.”