Abstract
Driven by the growing availability and accessibility of data and processing power, businesses across all sectors are developing and implementing increasingly "intelligent" systems that are empowered by a wave of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. This paper examines the state of AI adoption in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the manufacturing sector, an area of research that has received relatively little attention. Three SMEs, whose main offices are located in Northern Italy, have been studied to understand how they deal with the issue of AI adoption and what problems they typically encounter. An articulated picture emerges where SMEs struggle between the desire to realize the promises of innovation and the ability to build the appropriate organizational setting to pursue it.
