Kennisbank

What the activation level means in practice

The difference with foundation

At the foundation level, the basics are in place: there is a form of IT infrastructure that can carry AI applications, there is a beginning of data management, and the organization has decided that AI is something to take seriously. Activation is the step after that. It means that there are no longer only plans and intentions, but that AI is actually working — in a team, in a process, in a part of the organization. Something is in use. Something is delivering results that people can point to.

That is a fundamentally different situation than foundation, where the question is still whether the organization can begin. At activation, that question has been answered: a start has been made. The question that remains is whether that start can be repeated, expanded, and transferred — or whether it stays limited to the place where it originated.

How activation manifests itself

Organizations at this level usually recognize themselves in a number of recurring patterns. There is a pilot that works, often carried by a few people who are exceptionally motivated and who have figured out for themselves how to do something. There is a result, but the result depends on individuals, not on a process. If that person leaves or becomes busy with other work, the initiative comes to a halt.

The IT infrastructure supports what is happening, but is not set up to scale it: what works in one place must be rebuilt elsewhere, with different tools, different agreements, different assumptions. Data management is sufficient for the application that exists now, but not organized enough to set up a second or third application without repeating work. And at the organizational level, a shared picture is often missing: one department doesn't know that another has set up something similar, and there is no place where that knowledge comes together.

The seven dimensions of the measurement usually show this pattern precisely: fundamental dimensions such as organization, IT infrastructure, and data management score lower than the dependent dimensions that build on top of them. So there is activity, but the layer that must carry that activity is not yet complete.

What you recognize it by

A number of signals often recur together. People talk about "that tool that X's team uses" instead of a facility available to the entire organization. Questions about an application go to one person, not to a process or documentation. If someone on another team has the same problem, that person starts over, with their own approach, instead of connecting to what already exists. And decision-making about expansion — more budget, more people, more applications — proceeds on gut feeling and anecdote, because there is no shared overview of what works and why.

The plotting round within the measurement often makes this concrete and visible. When multiple people score separately, a greater spread is often noticeable at the activation level than at other levels: whoever is close to the initiative scores the organization higher than whoever is further removed from it. That spread is itself a signal. It says that success at this level is often experienced locally and that the picture of "where we stand" is not yet shared.

What the step to the next level requires

The transition from activation to the next level — insight — is not about more pilots or more enthusiasm. Those already exist. The transition is about making what already works able to carry weight: infrastructure that does not depend on one department, data management that does not force a second application to repeat work already done, and an organizational form in which knowledge about what works does not remain stuck with one person. That is less a technical step than a structural one: it concerns who owns what has been built, and whether that ownership extends beyond the people who took the initiative.

What that step looks like exactly differs per organization and depends on where the spread between the seven dimensions is greatest. For those at the activation level who want to know specifically what needs to happen to move forward, there is a detailed route at how you get from activation to the next level. Those who recognize themselves more in the picture of an organization that still needs to begin will find the corresponding step at how you get from foundation to the next level. And those who want to know what still needs to be done after activation — what an organization looks like that has moved beyond the first working application — can read that at what the insight level means in practice.

The bridge to what AI can take over

This measurement shows whether the organization can carry AI: whether the fundamental layer is in place under an application, and whether activation can expand without remaining dependent on individuals. That is a different question from which part of the work itself is suitable for AI. Those who want to know that — which part of a task, a role, or a process AI can actually take over — will find that in the work scan of FTE TO AI, which calculates per task which part of the work can be transferred. Both questions belong together: one measures the ground on which AI can stand, the other measures what can be placed on that ground.