By Jennifer Shine, Principal Solution Engineer, Imubit
At this year's Innovarpel LATAM conference, leaders from across industries shared practical lessons on AI adoption and digital transformation. The message that came through most clearly was that adopting AI changes how an organization works, and the technology is one part of that change.
Many organizations around the world are focused on deploying AI tools. The leaders in Latin America put more weight on the workforce. They are automating tasks, and they are also rethinking how decisions are made, how teams collaborate and how the organization grows.
These were my main takeaways from Innovarpel 2025.
Change the work, then choose the tools
Many companies fall into the trap of adopting AI to run their existing processes faster. In Latin America the focus is shifting toward using AI to change the way the work is done. That shift takes account of operating realities, including the bureaucratic complexity that often slows organizational change. By addressing the human and procedural sides of the change together with the technology, leaders in the region are setting AI up to deliver lasting progress, rather than a faster version of the status quo.
Leaders at Innovarpel asked questions such as:
- How do we use AI to anticipate problems instead of reacting to them?
- How do we align commercial, operations and technical teams around shared insights?
- How do we build resilience as well as efficiency?
AI as a reason to work together
Another theme was breaking down silos. AI is no longer the preserve of data science teams. It works best as a shared platform that connects different parts of the organization.
Companies at Innovarpel described how:
- Operations and commercial teams use AI insights together to adjust plans in real time.
- IT and business units collaborate on AI projects so that adoption sticks.
- Leadership builds AI into everyday decisions instead of saving it for quarterly reviews.
Treating AI as a tool the whole organization uses helps these companies avoid isolated pilots that never scale, one of the most common failures in AI adoption.
Measuring decisions and learning
Leaders in the region are also rethinking how they measure success. Beyond cost savings and completed tasks, they ask:
- Did AI help us make a better decision, faster?
- Did we catch a risk earlier than we would have before?
- Did the team learn something that improves future decisions?
Measuring decision quality and learning turns AI into a driver of growth as well as efficiency.
Emotional intelligence in leadership
The most forward-looking takeaway from Innovarpel was the role of emotional intelligence in managing AI adoption. Organizations in the region are developing leaders who can guide their teams through change. These leaders:
- Build trust in times of uncertainty.
- Create psychological safety, which encourages experimentation and learning.
- Meet resistance to change with empathy and clear communication.
Investing in people-centered leadership makes teams more willing to adopt new technology and reduces the friction that usually comes with change.
Culture change is a condition for success
Above all, the leaders at Innovarpel see cultural change as essential to making AI work. That means:
- Building AI into daily workflows as well as high-level strategy.
- Upskilling teams continuously so they keep pace with the tools.
- Creating an environment where learning and iteration are part of the process.
Latin American companies are showing how to adopt AI in a thoughtful, sustainable way. By putting collaboration, emotionally intelligent leadership and cultural change ahead of automation for its own sake, they are building long-term resilience and growth. For global organizations, the lesson is that technology changes little unless the people and the culture around it change too.
What this means in the plant
The same pattern holds inside a plant. Planning, process engineering, process control and operations each work in their own systems, on their own KPIs and at their own rhythm, so a plant can behave inconsistently even when everyone does their job well. Leaders feel this as a gap between the plan and the plant. The questions raised at Innovarpel, about shared insight, anticipating problems and judging decisions, are a good place to start closing it.
