During the opening keynote of Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo, which is taking place here through Thursday, Gartner analysts told the audience of over 6,500 CIOs and IT executives that value and risk are interconnected, and CIOs must balance AI value and risk to create lasting success.
Gartner Fellows Daryl Plummer and Kristin Moyer explain why AI success depends on managing risk, not just creating value during Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo in Barcelona.
AI success will come from creating the right momentum to compound value while preventing risk from escalating. “The best thing a CIO can do is to align value with risk and align safety with governance,” said Plummer. “Alignment is the key.”
“Alignment doesn’t mean everyone gets the same value or the same risk. It provides a consistent way to shape value-risk relationships,” said Kristin Moyer, Distinguished VP Analyst and Gartner Fellow. “For example, a Q2 2026 Gartner survey of over 2,000 CIOs and technology executives found that 71% of organizations expect to deploy agentic AI within the next 12 months, yet only 21% currently have agentic AI governance capabilities in place.
“That imbalance makes it difficult to create value faster than AI creates risk. Managing value and risk is about building the right kinds of momentum while avoiding the wrong kinds of drag.”
Gartner recommended that CIOs take two actions to compound AI value and manage risk:
Use the Gartner Value-Risk Flywheel to Align Value with Risk
The Gartner Value-Risk Flywheel visualizes the relationship between compounding value and compounding risk (see Figure 1). It helps organizations analyze what is compounding and why.
Figure 1: The Gartner Value-Risk Flywheel
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For example, in software development value can compound faster than risk. AI is now generating a significant share of the code in production software. As a result, AI is freeing software developers from the drag of manual coding, so they can drive good momentum through rapid prototyping, requirements-driven development, architectural thinking and product engineering.
Align Safety with Governance Through a Flywheel Governor
“Everyone sees value and risk a little bit differently, so something must coordinate the entire system. Flywheels need a governor, right at the center, who decides when value is worth the risk, what perspective on value should dominate and how to keep an organization safe,” said Plummer. “That’s the role of the flywheel governor for everything.”
“For example, with AI, different functions see different versions of the same AI initiative. A Flywheel Governor is a virtual organization that owns the plan to keep AI safe,” said Moyer. “It is a centralized decision-authority that drives advice and guides actions on accountability, technology and economics.
“This flywheel governor is the final piece of the value-risk puzzle that organizations must have. It is where momentum and drag go from bad to good. And with it, value and risk flywheels will always stay in alignment.”
