Faced with AI, which is disrupting our organizations, we are pleading for Collective Intelligence, and alerting SMEs.
By Nicolas Bard, Julien Benichou and Stéphane Taravant from the Digital League cluster.
How many days can a company last if a critical digital link fails, and how will it react to restore the situation?
In 2026, an SME must be able to withstand shocks (cyberattacks, supplier disruptions, climatic hazards, geopolitical tensions, skills shortages) while continuing to serve its customers and protect its cash flow. It is not an “IT subject”, but a question of adaptation and robustness of its activity, and collective intelligence plays a determining role in achieving this.
Faced with AI that is disrupting our organizations, faced with algorithms that lock themselves in bubbles, we plead in favor of collective intelligence. The sum of our knowledge and perspectives is an exponential force, the only one capable of transcending bias and designing together fairer technological uses, adapted to a world in full upheaval.
We work on a daily basis with local companies and share the same observation: we must stop confusing technological continuity with intelligent adaptation. We want to alert SME managers to realities that are still largely ignored and invite them to play collectively for the good of their company.
First warning: don’t let the race to AI distract you from the skills gap
AI promises increased individual performance, but it masks a deep problem: the lack of digital mastery. France Num and Pix point out that 3 out of 5 workers do not achieve digital autonomy at work, and nearly 80% of executives do not know how to check the reliability of information online. Worse: cognitive load. Work from the MIT Media Lab shows that excessive use of AI assistants degrades critical reasoning and thinking effort.
Climate directly threatens local digital infrastructure
The XDI firm, specialist in physical climate risk, analyzed 9,000 data centers. In Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, 30% of data centers — many of which host the critical services of thousands of SMEs — are exposed to major climate risks. This figure is expected to increase by 124% by 2050. Data centers have become a vital infrastructure on which we are all dependent.
“In France, we don’t have oil, but divisions”
The AXA Future Risks Report reveals two worrying findings: we are four times more concerned about the effects of climate change than about the lack of collective action to respond to it. At a time when communication is essential, economic, social inequalities and political divisions make France one of the most socially fragmented countries.
We have entered a world of polycrises, in which social, economic and climatic risks are mutually reinforcing. However, more than ever, we need to learn from others, listen and collaborate to face it.
The solitary hero is a myth — only the collective is saving
We constantly ask SMEs to be agile, innovative, cyber-mature, low carbon… then we leave them to face complexity alone, siled by the illusion of competitive advantage.
But, when the survival of an ecosystem is at stake, even competitors cooperate. We have observed this for a long time in biology, it is the same for organizations. As Olivier Hamant, biologist and researcher at ENS Lyon, shows, the most robust are those who collaborate best with their environment.
In 1997, Microsoft invested $150 million in Apple — not out of philanthropy, but to preserve an ecosystem. In 2014, following the failure of the Wii U, Satoru Iwata, director of Nintendo, refused to lay off a single employee and preferred to reduce his salary, allowing him to create the Switch, the most popular product in the company’s history.
In France, Duralex, the family business without a buyer but transformed into a SCOP, or Pocheco, a company in decline that has become regenerative, show that resilience comes through the collective, not through individualism and short-termism.
In 2026, SMEs must invest in collective intelligence
Resilience should no longer be a luxury reserved for large companies. Collective intelligence makes it accessible to everyone: it multiplies points of view, reduces blind spots, and enables fairer, more robust and lasting decisions.
Alert and provide the keys to act
We wanted to go further, beyond our own ecosystem, and launch a call for collaboration to which 43 organizations (companies, associations, schools, institutions) responded. Based on field experience, mistakes and lessons, we have produced concrete recommendations for small and medium-sized businesses in the region and made them available in the form of a digital commons.
Because the subject is no longer about being individually the most efficient in the short term. The subject is to be collectively the most robust in the long term. Resilience cannot be decreed. She gets organized. And, for SMEs, it is organized together.
