AI tops business priorities, according to a new study

On 4 June 2026, Corporate Excellence and CANVAS Estrategias Sostenibles presented Approaching the Future 2026 in Madrid, a study on reputation and the management of intangible assets. Its headline result is clear: for the first time, artificial intelligence ranks first in importance among the professionals surveyed and also leads the category of resources devoted to it.

That conclusion needs a careful reading. The report does not measure the economic value produced by AI, nor is it a census of every company. It gathers the views of 2,120 professionals in Ibero-America about the issues that carry the most weight in their organisations. Even so, it provides a useful signal of an agenda shift: AI has moved from an experimental topic to a management priority.

First in importance and resources

According to the summary published by CANVAS, 55.5% of respondents place AI among their most important issues. The study also puts it first for the resources, investment and work devoted by organisations, at 47%. Corporate communication ranks second in importance at 52.8% and remains the area receiving the most resources, at 48.3%.

Those figures are not a measure of technical adoption and do not mean that a company has deployed the same AI system across every department. They describe stated priorities and organisational attention. That distinction prevents an inflated interpretation: leading an agenda does not mean that every project is in production, profitable or properly controlled.

In Spain, reporting on the study puts the share of organisations that see AI as the most important issue for their activity at 61.4%. Some 54.8% say they are actively working on implementation. In Latin America, the reported figures are 52.8% and 43.4%, respectively. The gap between relevance and implementation is not a flaw in the study; it describes the work still required to turn a recognised priority into sustained processes.

Training, content and the organisation of work

The report identifies employee training and skills development as the first focus of AI efforts, followed by use in communication and content generation. It also points to three challenges: continuous training, sound governance and the reorganisation of work. They are less eye-catching than a new model release, but they determine whether a tool becomes part of a workflow responsibly.

Training is not simply teaching people how to write prompts for an assistant. It includes deciding which tasks can be supported, which data must not leave an organisation’s systems, who reviews outputs and what happens when an answer is wrong. Governance is not a later bureaucratic layer either: it establishes permissions, evaluation, traceability and accountability before a pilot becomes routine.

CANVAS also notes that the 2026 edition draws its forces-of-change analysis directly from professionals for the first time. That approach is why the results need to be read in context: Spain and Latin America share interest in AI, while facing different organisational environments and risks.

From priority to a metric

The most useful finding is not that AI comes first. It is the question left open: how will an organisation show that this priority improves something specific? A responsible deployment needs a defined problem, an outcome measure and a way to detect mistakes. It might reduce time spent on an administrative task, improve retrieval of internal knowledge, or assist a team under human review.

Once the goal is measurable, so are the limits. If a tool handles sensitive information, its use should be proportionate, auditable and reversible. If it generates content, a person needs to validate facts, tone and context. The report points to this shift: the issue is no longer simply whether AI matters, but which capabilities, controls and changes in work are necessary to use it without mistaking activity for value.

Sources

• CANVAS: Approaching the Future 2026 summary
• Corporate Excellence: report presentation
• CANVAS: the study’s geopolitical context
• Cinco Días: the study results