2 articles · 1 min read

The Staircase of AI Adoption

A practical framework for understanding and navigating your organization's AI adoption journey through four progressive steps.

The Staircase of AI Adoption is the framework Intric uses to guide organizations through their AI implementation journey. It’s been developed through our hands-on experience helping over 60 organizations successfully adopt AI, combined with insights from established scientific research.

By integrating real-world learnings from our customers with two proven academic frameworks—the SAMR Model and the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM)—we’ve created an approach that is both practically tested and scientifically grounded:

SAMR Model: Defines the four stages of technology adoption and how organizations progressively integrate AI into their workflows
Technology Acceptance Model (TAM): Explains what drives people to actually use new technology

AI adoption isn’t a single leap—it’s a journey up a staircase. Each step builds on the previous one, creating a sustainable path from efficiency gains to organizational transformation.

The Four Steps

Select a step to see what changes in the work, and the sentence people say once it has taken hold.

1 / 4 · Swap a tool

Substitution

Replace a manual task with AI and keep everything else the same. People save time without changing how they work.

"This is easy"

2 / 4 · Improve a tool

Augmentation

AI does the task better than a person could alone: it raises quality and catches what people miss.

"This is better"

3 / 4 · Change the task

Modification

The work is redesigned around AI. People move from doing routine tasks to overseeing them and deciding.

"This is my new job"

4 / 4 · Redefine the process

Redefinition

AI makes services and ways of working possible that did not exist before.

"This is our future"

The Two Keys to Unlocking Each Step

Each step on the staircase is “unlocked” by two critical factors that determine whether people will actually adopt AI:

Perceived Ease of Use

“Is this a headache to use?”

People need to feel confident they can use the tool without extensive training or frustration. The easier it feels, the more likely they are to try it.

Perceived Usefulness

“Does this actually help me?”

People need to see clear value in their daily work. If AI doesn’t solve a real problem or save meaningful time, adoption will stall.

The golden rule: Start where it’s easy and useful, then progress to more complex applications once trust is established.

Remember: The goal isn’t to reach Step 4 as fast as possible. The goal is to build sustainable AI adoption that creates lasting value at each stage of your journey.

Real-world example: contract management

A public sector organization climbed the staircase with one use case, from searching contracts to reshaping procurement. Each step built on the one before it.

1 / 4 · Substitution

The digital searcher

An assistant with the contract archive as its knowledge answers questions like "Which contracts renew automatically?" instead of staff searching 50-page PDFs.

Twenty minutes of searching became seconds

2 / 4 · Augmentation

The smart auditor

The assistant cross-references contract clauses with supplier invoices and flags prices and service levels that do not match.

Found discrepancies people missed, and recovered money

3 / 4 · Modification

The autonomous watchdog

Connected to the finance system, it checks every incoming invoice against the contract and alerts staff only when something is off.

Staff manage exceptions instead of checking every invoice

4 / 4 · Redefinition

The strategic innovator

The monitoring data opens up supplier renegotiation, more accurate budget forecasts and compliance checks offered to other departments.

What becomes possible next