Solutions
AI by Design
Helping organizations close the gap between AI ambition and adoption.
- Overview
- People
AI investment is rising rapidly, yet many organizations are struggling to realize meaningful value. Despite billions invested in Generative AI, the challenge is rarely the technology itself. More often, organizations lack the strategy, governance, operating model, and workforce readiness required to adopt AI at scale. As a result, pilots fail to progress; adoption stalls and expected benefits remain out of reach.
Ankura, AI by Design is a new technology-agnostic advisory practice created to close the gap between AI ambition and realized value.
AI by Design is technology-agnostic, human-centered and growth focused. We start with your ambitions, your people, your customers and the capabilities that make you distinctive, then design the strategy, governance, skills and operating model needed to embed AI so that it works.
Solutions
Three connected pillars bring strategy, AI governance engineering, and workforce transformation into one adaptive programme, underpinned by an internal AI Factory and a specialist ecosystem of ‘best athlete’ partners.
AI Strategy
Ankura helps boards and leadership teams identify where AI can create growth opportunities then connect priorities to delivery. We assess opportunities by value, feasibility, risk, and organizational readiness, prove what’s possible with human-centered MVPs, and build a sequenced roadmap that converts board ambition into a funded, measurable program.
AI Governance Engineering
AI governance too often remains trapped in static documentation, disconnected from the lived experience of the teams building, operating, and overseeing AI. This creates friction where organizations need flow, slowing innovation and limiting visibility, control, and confidence across the AI estate. Ankura enables organizations to effectively manage AI risk and unlock value at scale by re-wiring the user experience of AI governance to be more intuitive to navigate and efficient to operate.
Workforce Transformation
Most AI programs stall in the middle, where the workforce quietly reverts. We redesign roles, reskill people and embed human-centered change so AI is embraced and adoption takes place. Co-designed and measured by outcomes, this is where strategy and governance meet the people who have to use AI every day and is the primary stepping stone to value realization.
An Ecosystem Built for AI Transformation
Delivering AI at scale requires expertise beyond strategy, adoption, and workforce transformation. Instead of owning every capability, Ankura has assembled a curated ecosystem of “best athlete” partners to help clients accelerate outcomes and realize value from AI investments. Each partner is world-class in their discipline and has been specifically selected because of their track record of shipping their work inside real businesses.
Integrated into our delivery verticals and our AI Factory: Inference Group provides advanced AI engineering and deployment capabilities; Seymour Powell brings human-centered design and communications expertise to enable workforce adoption; and Decoded equips employees with the AI literacy and workflow reskilling needed to embed change at scale.
Anchoring every engagement, Ankura leads throughout; providing strategy, leadership, program oversight, governance, and transformation expertise with specialist partners delivering in lockstep.
The result is one accountable team made up of best-in-class specialists working together to help organizations move from AI ambition to scaled, sustained business impact.
Inference Group is a UK AI engineering company that assesses capabilities, then builds, deploys and monitors production-grade AI systems. Founded in 2024 and led by Dr Richard Davis, it takes enterprise AI from pilot to production for clients in financial services, telecoms, healthcare and hospitality.
Seymour Powell is a global strategic design and innovation consultancy. They combine foresight, human and behavioural insight and industrial design to make disruptive technology, usable, desirable and adoptable.
Decoded transforms how organizations build digital and data capability — from immersive AI literacy sessions to full apprenticeships in data, AI and cybersecurity. Working from graduates to senior leaders, they have given over a million people the confidence and skills to operate in an AI-first world.
AI by Design Advisory Council
The practice is supported by an Advisory Council of senior figures from technology, governance, academia and industry, convened to challenge and stress-test its thinking and keep it grounded in real enterprise experience. The Council brings an independent view on where AI is genuinely creating value, how organizations are managing risk and regulation, and what ‘good’ adoption looks like in practice. Its role is to ensure Ankura’s advice is grounded in enterprise experience and reflects the frontier of AI governance and workforce transformation.
Hywel Ball
Sir Rupert Gavin
Dr Laura Gilbert CBE
Professor Gina Neff
Kathryn Parsons MBE
Key Contacts
- Catriona Campbell
Senior Managing Director
London, England
- Patrick Murray
Managing Director
London, England
