Identifying and Scaling AI Use Cases¶
Source: OpenAI · PDF · Published 2025
Why This Matters¶
This report is the foundation for the cookbook's six use case primitives. OpenAI analyzed over 600 enterprise AI deployments and found that nearly all use cases fall into six categories — Content Creation, Research, Coding, Data Analysis, Ideation & Strategy, and Automation. Understanding these primitives helps you classify your own workflows and find the right building blocks faster.
Key Takeaways¶
- Six primitives cover nearly all enterprise AI use cases. Rather than treating every AI application as unique, the report groups them into six fundamental types of work that apply across departments and industries.
- Start with repetitive tasks, skill bottlenecks, and ambiguity. The report identifies three areas where AI delivers immediate value: automating tedious work, bridging expertise gaps between teams, and helping employees navigate open-ended challenges.
- Leadership sets the pace. Organizations where leadership actively encourages AI adoption see faster results than those relying on bottom-up experimentation alone.
- Simple use cases beat complex ones for building momentum. Empowering individual employees to find use cases that work for them is often more effective than launching large, complex AI initiatives.
- Prioritize by impact and feasibility. The report provides a framework for gathering use case ideas from across the organization and ranking them by business value, data readiness, and implementation effort.
- Department workflow mapping accelerates discovery. Beyond individual use cases, the report recommends mapping entire department workflows to surface systemic AI opportunities.
How the Cookbook Uses This¶
The six primitives from this report are the backbone of the cookbook's Use Cases section. Each primitive has its own page with platform-agnostic examples mapped to Agentic Building Blocks. The report's discovery methodology also influenced the Analyze Workflows step of the Business-First AI Framework.