In ~3 minutes. The FAROL — AI Index for SMEs v1.0 is a (semi-automated) synthesis of 8 global frameworks consolidated by the FAROL group (CIn-UFPE), calibrated for the reality of Brazilian small and medium-sized businesses.
Most existing frameworks inherit from CMMI — a 1990s model for stable software. AI is not stable. The state of the art changes every few months.
A company at "level 5 — optimized" feels it has arrived. Precisely for that reason, it is the most vulnerable to being overtaken by the next wave.
Traditional frameworks reward standardization. In AI, experimenting and discarding quickly is more valuable. 42% of companies abandon AI projects — and that's not failure.
Maturity measures position. What matters in AI is speed of adaptation. Someone who adopted LLMs yesterday may be more fluent than someone who has been doing ML for 5 years.
Just as TOEFL measures fluency in English, the FAROL scale measures fluency in AI — from N0 to N5. A living scale that recognizes that stopping means going backwards.
FAROL measures each axis separately — and shows where the opportunities are.
Clear vision of why AI matters — and leadership that acts coherently, allocating resources and prioritizing projects.
Accessible and quality data, in infrastructure that allows training, inference, and continuous experimentation.
Talent, experimentation culture, and AI literacy distributed across the organization — not concentrated in one person.
How AI projects are selected and evaluated. Governance that doesn't paralyze — but doesn't let chaos reign either.
AI that reaches the end customer: products and experiences that solve real problems — not just internal optimization.
How the company identifies and mitigates AI risks — bias, privacy, transparency — without paralyzing innovation.
FAROL critically synthesizes the 8 most respected frameworks in the world — and calibrates for the Brazilian context in each index of the series (starting with SME Index v1.0).
Other frameworks measure maturity — a position. FAROL measures fluency — a movement. That's why it engages with all of them but reaches different answers.
(Semi-automated) synthesis of the world's 8 most respected global frameworks for AI maturity, consolidated by the FAROL group and calibrated for the reality of Brazilian SMEs. Six axes, three minutes. You leave with your radar, comparison against the 8 frameworks, and concrete next steps to move up a level.
It's the first index in a series — not the definitive version. Other indices will come for other contexts (education, health, public sector...) and new versions will refine this one.