The Federal Reserve’s qualitative research on small business AI adoption didn’t ask analysts what should be happening. It asked owners what actually is.
The finding: interest is real. Follow-through isn’t.
The obstacles they described weren’t about trust in the technology. They were logistical — policy and regulatory uncertainty, upfront cost, the staff time it takes to retrain a team or upgrade a system, and, showing up in nearly every conversation, simply not having the time to figure out where to start.
That’s a different problem than the one most vendors are solving for. A firm that’s short on time doesn’t need a more capable model. It needs someone to show up, understand the actual workflow, and remove the parts that don’t need a person — without adding a new tool to learn on top of everything else already on the plate.
Source: Federal Reserve, “AI Adoption Among Small Businesses: Qualitative Insights”.
If the barrier is time, not belief, what does an adoption path look like that doesn’t ask a busy owner to spend more of it upfront?