Know the road. Power the future: Data and AI executive panel series report
Blogs and Articles
For modern data transformation, the mandate is clear: reduce operational costs with AI-led innovation. Currently, up to 80% of enterprise data sits "dark" or unused, consuming highly constrained data centre power without delivering value.
For modern data transformation, the mandate is clear: reduce operational costs with AI-led innovation. Currently, up to 80% of enterprise data sits "dark" or unused, consuming highly constrained data centre power without delivering value.
The cultural mandate: “Organisations don't change; people do.”
90% to 95% of AI initiatives are currently failing to return value.
"Organisations don't change; people do. The value is not unlocked by the acquisition of the new thing; the value is unlocked when culturally and behaviourally we stop doing things this way and we start doing things that way."
Dominic Thurbon
Despite massive enterprise investment, an estimated 90% to 95% of AI initiatives are currently failing to return value. The defining characteristic of the top AI achievers is that they spend twice as much on their people as they do on technology. The transition from manual processes to high-performance execution is a change management challenge, not just a technological one.
For instance, Dom Thurbon shared his research on paediatric heart surgeons at a world-renowned children’s hospital. The team identified the transition from the operating theatre to the ICU as a high-risk surgical phase. Critical data revealed that more than 30% of patients suffered five or more life-threatening human errors during this handover. To drive high-performance execution, these surgical teams partnered with elite mechanics to adopt their rapid, error-free transition models. By prioritising behavioural transformation over technical upgrades—establishing clear leadership, relentless rehearsal, and an obligation to maintain radical honesty regarding mistakes—the hospital reduced transition errors by 300% in a single year.
Strategic takeaway: Building the world’s best infrastructure is useless if the organisation's behavioural culture does not change to match it.
Data as a window to truth
66% of companies have “honesty” in their values statement, but less than 18% of staff trust their leaders are being honest.
A successful data strategy requires a culture of “radical honesty”. Properly calibrated data is a window into the truth, and truth is the most essential commodity for driving business change.
When Domino's Pizza faced a crisis in 2010, they were dead last in consumer taste tests across the US fast-food market.
Strategic takeaway: A successful data strategy requires anchoring your business to objective truth rather than corporate spin.
Activating the archive and conquering technical debt
80% of an organisation's data currently sits “dark” or unused.
Organisations are sitting on massive reserves of legacy data, but this technical debt often represents a severe compliance risk and an opportunity cost.
The M&A risk
A global healthcare organisation accumulated 10 years of technical debt through acquisitions, creating isolated islands of data that led to unsubstantiated employee pension claims and legal risks. By deploying a digital platform to connect this unstructured data into a single source of truth, the organisation systematically applied automated retention policies, resolving the crisis without relying on brute-force manual labour.
The heritage advantage
McLaren Racing transformed decades of racing heritage into insights for the future. From preserving iconic moments that were previously at risk of deterioration to activating assets for new opportunities, they are driving innovation and fan connection, building foundations for future success, and turning memory into momentum.
Strategic takeaway: Successful execution requires transforming technical debt into a “heritage advantage” by activating unstructured data.
Scaling hyper-personalisation: Letting go of control
To achieve the speed and scale required for modern customer engagement, organisations must shift their mindset. A leading Australian digital entertainment brand manages its product by transitioning from simple cohort-based targeting to 1-to-1 generative AI content. Because AI generates unique content for every user, the product team has shifted from manual testing to establishing safe, automated governance boundaries. For the C-suite, enabling AI means establishing safe boundaries rather than retaining manual control, perfectly encapsulated by the racing proverb: “If everything's under control, you're not going fast enough.”
Strategic takeaway: Scaling AI maturity requires a shift in mindset from manual control to establishing safe, automated governance boundaries.
Governance as a turbocharger (human-in-the-loop AI)
Over 5,000 CCTV feeds are monitored by AI with a reported 99.7% detection accuracy.
A common misconception is that data governance acts as a barrier to innovation. In reality, strong governance is the essential foundation that enables the business to deploy AI safely. A major Australian transport operator applies this principle by using AI to monitor over 5,000 CCTV feeds to detect crashes and toll compliance. However, the AI is designed to augment human operators, not replace them.
While AI handles the immense scale of data processing, humans remain accountable for the decisions, correcting the AI's inputs to continuously improve the model. This human-in-the-loop approach is vital because AI still struggles to predict uniquely human, unpredictable behaviours—such as drivers yielding out of courtesy or abruptly stopping on a motorway because they found a spider in their car.
Strategic takeaway: Strong governance is not a barrier to innovation; it is the essential foundation that enables safe, high-velocity AI deployment.
Bridging the performance gap
Throughout the event, our thought leaders highlighted a common performance gap: the struggle to move from disconnected, dormant data to active execution. Overcoming these information silos and manual processes requires more than just a strategy; it requires a practical bridge.
Overcoming information silos and manual processes requires more than just a strategy; it requires a practical bridge. Iron Mountain InSight® Digital Experience Platform (DXP) provides this foundation, intelligently extracting and unifying your unstructured data into a secure, single source of truth.
This isn’t just about preserving the past—it’s about using your data to fuel competitive advantage and performance outcomes today. That’s the value of unlocking your heritage to power your future.
About Iron Mountain: Your partner for data activation
Over 90% of the Fortune 1000 trust Iron Mountain to protect what matters most. With over 70 years of experience, a global network of 1,450 facilities, and 68 exabytes of data under management, we are the trusted global leader in information management.
But we do more than protect the past; we power the future. Whether you need to extract value from dark data or automatically enforce compliance, Iron Mountain InSight® DXP bridges the gap between dormant assets and active intelligence:
- AI/ML extraction: Turns messy, unsearchable unstructured data into actionable insights.
- Workflow automation: Removes the human error and lag time of manual processes by autonomously applying retention and disposal policies.
- Unified view: Solves the “silo” problem by connecting isolated islands of physical and digital assets into a single source of truth.
This report captures the most critical insights from a recent leadership event in Melbourne, Australia, illustrating how industry experts bridge the gap between dormant assets and active execution. To demonstrate this strategy in action, the event highlighted a core case study on how the McLaren Mastercard Formula 1 Team is partnering with Iron Mountain to digitise their 60-year archive, unlocking their heritage to power future competitive advantage.
Crucially, the report reveals that while data is the fuel for transformation, culture is the engine; technology alone cannot overcome structural business challenges.
Unlocking heritage to power the future
Learn more about our multi-year partnership with the McLaren Mastercard Formula 1 Team.
Read more on the partnership page