The world is experiencing a period of massive volatility and change. How will economic and geopolitical factors influence decisions made by enterprise businesses in 2026? How will business leaders make the most of the advances in AI and the growth of other emerging technologies? And how will their strategies tie in with what employees and customers are experiencing?
The IBM Institute of Business Value (IBM IBV) surveyed more than 1,000 C-suite executives and 8,500 global consumers and employees to explore these questions. The findings are presented in a report, '5 trends for 2026: Capture fleeting opportunities with confidence'. Here's an overview of the trends they identified.
1. Enterprises will use agentic AI to take advantage of global uncertainty
The world is becoming more volatile, creating both risk and opportunity for businesses.
74% of executives that were questioned said that economic and geopolitical volatility in the world will create new business opportunities in 2026, but more than half feel there's less time to identify and take advantage of any emerging opportunities.
Responding quickly requires flexible IT and data infrastructures that help information to get to the right people - and right AI agents - in good time. In fact, executives who believe agentic AI supports better, faster decisions are more than twice as likely to see opportunities out of the volatility.
So, for example, a manufacturer who's facing supply chain disruption can use AI agents to respond faster to help find alternative suppliers while rerouting its shipping and adjusting its pricing models.
To be able to capitalize on market opportunities as they emerge, enterprises need to rethink their operations for agility the report's authors advise. This includes enabling AI agents to monitor multiple market signals simultaneously, analyze complex interdependencies in their markets and their business, and model different scenarios in real time.
2. Employees will be more open to embracing AI than everyone thinks
While more than half of business leaders have concerns about the risk of employee burnout from rapidly changing processes in the workplace, 77% of employees themselves feel that the rate at which technology is changing their working lives is sustainable.
Across all age groups, twice as many employees are ready to embrace greater use of AI at work rather than less use of AI. 63% are open to working with an AI agent and nearly half would even be open to being managed by one.
In fact, more than half of employees are willing to switch companies to be able to learn to use AI, and 42% would take a pay cut to do it.
And while 56% of executives believe their workforce will need new training in 2026 because of AI driven automation, it's not just technical skills they want to prioritize.
Businesses want their best employees to do what AI cannot in order to give their organizations a competitive advantage the report suggests. This includes nurturing human skills such as the ability to exercise judgement, build relationships and drive innovation.
3. Building customer trust in AI will become non-negotiable
Consumers don't expect AI to be flawless, but they are going to insist on total transparency.
56% of consumers are so excited about the prospect of using cutting edge AI services that they'd put up with initial teething problems. They know that AI is evolving and will try again if it doesn't get something right the first time.
But transparency and trust surrounding AI are non-negotiable.
89% of consumers want to know when they're interacting with AI - with four in five saying they would lose trust in a brand if it intentionally concealed AI's involvement. Two thirds would switch to another company if this happened and around half would be willing to pay more to switch.
Enterprises need to incorporate AI transparency into their products and services from the start. This includes giving their customers easy-to-grasp explanations about how AI is using their data, how the AI will improve their experience and the option to remove their data if they choose.
AI sovereignty is becoming a priority for global enterprises
AI sovereignty is an organization's "ability to control and govern its AI systems, data and infrastructure at all times". And according to the researchers it's becoming mission critical.
Without AI sovereignty, organizations - especially those whose operations and IT infrastructure spans multiple regions - may not be able to adapt quickly enough when hit by a crisis in the global environment. For example, 50% of executives agreed that they are worried about over-reliance on compute resources in certain regions.
Crises in this instance can include everything from regulatory changes that impact where customer data can be stored and processed, trade restrictions cutting off access to materials, such as advanced semiconductors for AI, to model drift creating bias in AI outputs because the data in AI models no longer matches real world data.
A large majority (93%) of executives said they need to factor AI sovereignty into their 2026 strategy. Part of this is about identifying vulnerabilities in the AI ecosystem and bringing at-risk capabilities closer to home. Broadly speaking, AI sovereignty involves embracing "chaos-ready orchestration'. For example, can you change where your models run, how your data is governed and who controls business continuity if global systems falter?
5. Ecosystems are key to the advancement of quantum and other emerging tech
In the technology sector the power of ecosystems is coming to the fore, especially as we try to hasten the development of emerging technologies such as quantum computing.
For example, it's predicted that quantum advantage - the point at which quantum computers can outperform classical computing to solve a problem - will emerge by the end of 2026. But no single organization has the resources to maintain quantum computing alone, without the support of a host of ecosystem partners that provide real world data, computational power, specialist expertise and more.
In fact, quantum-ready organizations - those that are furthest into their quantum journey - are three times more likely to belong to multiple ecosystems than the least ready organizations.
The research findings strongly support the positive impact of ecosystems. 82% of executives agree that they gain more value from ecosystem partners than they individually contribute, 79% agree that their ecosystem partners help them to more rapidly adopt new technologies and 77% agree that the quality of data within their ecosystems improves business outcomes.
This blog was originally published in the IBM Community.