# Why Most Organizations Aren’t Getting Value from Generative AI

1 Research Highlights February 11, 2026 ![professor_batia_wiesenfeld_headshot.png](/sites/default/files/styles/246w/public/2025-03/professor_batia_wiesenfeld_headshot.png?itok=TRIMBCyr)**Overview:** Generative AI (GenAI) has spread through organizations at remarkable speed, with firms investing billions in hopes of boosting productivity and innovation. Yet many companies – especially in healthcare – report that GenAI has fallen short of delivering organization-wide benefits. In their new research, “[Generative Organizational Learning: Affordances for New Modes of Knowledge Search, Creation, Transfer, and Forgetting with LLMs](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6221878),” NYU Stern Professor [**Batia Wiesenfeld**](https://www.stern.nyu.edu/faculty/bio/batia-wiesenfeld) and co-author Katherine Kellogg (MIT Sloan) show why. Studying a healthcare system at the forefront of GenAI adoption, the authors find that GenAI can dramatically expand organizational learning and innovation – but only when paired with the right organizational structures, processes, and skills. Without these complements, the promise of GenAI remains elusive.

**Why Study This Now:** GenAI is rapidly evolving, and its use across industries is accelerating faster than organizations’ understanding of how to deploy it effectively. Healthcare systems face urgent challenges – high costs, severe burnout, and limited resources – that demand scalable innovation. At the same time, leaders are grappling with how to harness GenAI safely and productively.

**What the Researchers Found:** The study examines how GenAI changes organizational learning – how employees search for ideas, create solutions, share knowledge, and discard what doesn’t work. Key findings include:

- **GenAI broadens participation in innovation.** Employees far beyond traditional expert roles can now contribute ideas and solutions.
- **Scalable innovations become abundant.** Instead of a few hard-won breakthroughs, organizations can generate large volumes of potential solutions.
- **New organizational systems are essential.** Leaders can create structures such as “promptathons” and on-demand GenAI “office hours” to channel this surge of innovation.
- **Risky “knowledge” increases**. GenAI produces ideas that may be inaccurate or unsafe, requiring new guardrails such as “judge” LLMs to evaluate and filter outputs.

**What Does This Change:** The research challenges the long-standing assumption that organizations operate under conditions of knowledge scarcity. With GenAI, the core challenge shifts from *finding* ideas to *curating* them – deciding what to adopt, adapt, or discard. For managers, this means innovation success depends less on individual brilliance and more on organizational design.

**Key Insight:** “GenAI does not automatically deliver value,” explains Wiesenfeld. “Its real payoff comes when organizations redesign how people learn, innovate, and evaluate ideas – turning knowledge abundance into a strategic advantage rather than a liability.”

## More from Professor Wiesenfeld

- [Rivalry and Collaboration Attitudes: NYU Study Finds Writers Need Both to Thrive in the Age of AI](https://www.stern.nyu.edu/index%2ephp/experience-stern/faculty-research/research-highlights/rivalry-and-collaboration-attitudes-nyu-study-finds-writers-need-both-thrive-age-ai)
- [New Research Reveals Uptake of AI-powered Messaging in Healthcare Settings](https://www.stern.nyu.edu/index%2ephp/experience-stern/faculty-research/new-research-reveals-uptake-ai-powered-messaging-healthcare-settings)
- ["Rivalry as a Craft": NYU Study Reveals How Writers Compete With AI](https://www.stern.nyu.edu/index%2ephp/experience-stern/faculty-research/rivalry-craft-nyu-study-reveals-how-writers-compete-ai)
- [AI Tool Successfully Responds to Patient Questions in Electronic Health Record](https://www.stern.nyu.edu/index%2ephp/experience-stern/faculty-research/ai-tool-successfully-responds-patient-questions-electronic-health-record)
- [New Research From NYU Indicates Telemedicine May Be Less Efficient Than In-Person-Based Care](https://www.stern.nyu.edu/index%2ephp/experience-stern/faculty-research/new-research-from-nyu-indicates-telemedicine-may-be-less-efficient-than-in-person-based-care)