The AI Adoption Curve: What We’re Seeing in Collective 54

At Collective 54, I talk to hundreds of founders and executives of boutique professional services firms every year. Right now, AI comes up in almost every conversation. Where to start, what tools to use, how to get teams on board, and how to think about the future of the firm. We believe the future of professional services is becoming AI native, and everything we do as a community is oriented around helping firms get there.

We’ve been looking at this through three lenses that I think are worth sharing: the standard adoption curve, the three eras of professional services firms, and the pattern of how major technologies have reshaped how knowledge and ideas are shared. When you overlay all three, it paints a clear picture of where we are and where we believe this is going.

The Adoption Curve

There’s a standard adoption curve that describes how new technologies get adopted.  It’s a bell curve with five segments, and if we apply this to AI, here is how it plays out:

• Innovators (2.5%): All in with AI. These are firms that are actively experimenting, implementing, and generating tangible outcomes using AI. These are the firms becoming what we call Era 3 AI native firms. They’re building, testing, and learning every day.
• Early Adopters (13.5%): Very pro AI. These are leaders using AI internally in operations, getting their teams to use it, figuring out use cases, where to start, how it works, and what tools to use. They’re seeing early results and building momentum across their firms.
• Early Majority (34%): AI skeptical, positive. These leaders know AI is here to stay but they’re skeptical. They don’t know where to start or how it works. They’re looking for guidance and proof before making a move.
• Late Majority (34%): AI skeptical, negative. These firms are more pessimistic and resistant to AI. But there’s also an awareness that they can’t ignore AI forever. They may not know where to start, how to start, or what to try AI on.
• Laggards (16%): AI adverse. These are leaders refusing to believe AI impacts them. Maybe they’re refusing to use or implement it, some may think they’re a unicorn and it doesn’t apply to their firm, or, quite simply, some leaders don’t want to go through the challenge of changing the firm.

The Three Eras of Professional Services

Alongside the adoption curve, we’ve been thinking about where firms are operating from a business model perspective. We see three eras.

• Era 1 is the Human Centric Professional Services Firm. This is how firms have operated for nearly the last hundred years. Think David Maister’s “Managing the Professional Services Firm.” Relationships, expertise, and trust drove everything. Great firms were built in this era and there is a lot of wisdom here. But in Era 1, you’re relying on humans to keep track of everything. Knowledge lives in people’s heads. When someone leaves, it walks out the door with them. This makes it very difficult to grow a thriving firm.
• Era 2 is the Tech Enabled Services Firm. Think CRMs, QuickBooks, project management tools, all the technology that makes operating a business better, faster, and cheaper. Era 2 is a huge leap from Era 1 in most cases. But it also introduces a lot of noise. There are more tools, more data, more dashboards, and more places to look. As a human, you have to know where to find the signal. And while it’s better, faster, and cheaper than Era 1, it’s still not perfect.
• Era 3 is the AI Native Professional Services Firm. This is the optimal state and where we believe the industry is headed. Ideally, this is where AI can perform 80% of the tasks, leaving the 20% highest value work to the humans. AI can find the signal in the noise and surface it for you. It can analyze, recommend, and execute in ways that previous technology never could. It adds “smarter” to the better, faster, cheaper argument.

We’ve Seen This Pattern Before

AI is following the same pattern as every major technology that changed how information, ideas, and knowledge are shared.

The printing press fundamentally changed how knowledge was shared. Before it existed, information moved slowly and was only accessible to a small group of people. After it spread, books became affordable, ideas traveled across borders, and the speed at which people could learn and build on each other’s work increased dramatically.

The internet took that even further. It changed how we communicate, how we buy, how we sell, and how we deliver services. Information that used to take weeks to share could move in seconds.

AI follows the same thread, changing how information, ideas, and knowledge are shared. However, one key difference here, is that AI is accelerating the pace of this change dramatically.

For example, hundreds of years passed between the printing press and the internet. Decades passed between the internet and AI. And now with AI, things are happening almost in real-time it feels like.

Why this Matters

The firms in our community who are trying to become Era 3 firms are further along on the curve and are already seeing the results. They’re more efficient, their teams are more productive, and they’re delivering better outcomes for clients. And the gap between them and the rest of the curve is growing.

The firms that wait may eventually adopt AI too, but they’ll do it at a higher cost, with less time to figure it out, and against competitors who already have a head start. And the firms that never build this capability? We fear these firms may become obsolete. 

The adoption curve is playing out in real time across our community, and the eras of professional services are shifting. The firms that pick up the pace and learn AI now will be the ones that lead the next era. The firms that don’t will fall behind. AI native firms will do things better, faster, cheaper, and smarter, and that advantage only compounds over time.

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