Emerging Intelligent Automation Influencers to Watch in 2027
Beyond RPA: the practitioners carrying intelligent automation into the agent era — the updated Engatica emerging-IA list.
Gartner predicts that more than 40% of agentic AI projects will be cancelled by the end of 2027 — killed by escalating costs, unclear business value and weak risk controls. Anyone who ran an RPA programme in 2018 is having déjà vu: those are the same three causes, in the same order. The people below are intelligent automation's veterans — the researchers who measured what bots actually delivered, the analysts who graded the vendors, and the founders who sold the vision — and in 2027 they are the agent era's reality check. This edition updates their roles honestly: one has retired, two have founded agent companies, and the field's flagship textbook is now called Agentic Artificial Intelligence.
Hold the cancellation forecast against Gartner's second 2025 prediction: by 2029, agentic AI will autonomously resolve 80% of common customer-service issues without human intervention, cutting operational costs by 30%. The market structure has already moved — Everest Group's Intelligent Process Automation Platform PEAK Matrix 2025 treats the category the old RPA vendors compete in as converged on unified platforms that combine "AI agents, robots, and people into governed workflows". The ceiling is enormous and the failure rate is too; that tension is this list's whole subject.
| Name | Known as | Follow for |
|---|---|---|
| Pascal Bornet | Author, Intelligent Automation, IRREPLACEABLE & Agentic Artificial Intelligence (2025) | The IA-to-agentic bridge — profile |
| Leslie Willcocks | Professor Emeritus, LSE | The most rigorous RPA/automation research programme |
| Mary Lacity | Professor Emerita, University of Arkansas (retired 2026) | Automation adoption case evidence — the RPA research legacy, with Willcocks |
| Sarah Burnett | Chief Technology Evangelist, KYP.ai | Agentic process intelligence |
| Ian Barkin | Founder, magentIQ; Symphony Ventures co-founder | Building agent companies — magentIQ, 2B Ventures |
| Frank Casale | Founder, Institute for RPA & AI | The practitioner community's convener |
| Amardeep Modi | Vice President, Everest Group (Service Optimization Technologies) | Automation and AI services markets |
| Kashyap Kompella | CEO, RPA2AI Research | Automation analyst perspective |
| David Brain | Co-founder, 2B Ventures | Delivery-side lessons from real programmes |
| Phil Fersht | CEO and chief analyst, HFS Research | Agents judged on outcomes, not licences — co-author, Agentic Artificial Intelligence |
| Nandan Mullakara | Automation practitioner and author | The practitioner account of the RPA-to-agents transition — co-author, Agentic Artificial Intelligence |
| Mihir Shukla | CEO, chairman and co-founder, Automation Anywhere | Agentic Process Automation from the RPA incumbent side |
Where the field went
The through-line from this list to 2027: the winners treat automation as an operations discipline — inventories, owners, evals, incident drills — which is exactly the discipline the LLM agent era now needs.
Frequently asked questions
How was this list compiled?
The list rebuilds Engatica's original emerging intelligent-automation ranking. We checked all ten original entries against 2025–26 sources and updated roles honestly: one figure has retired, one founder's history needed two corrections, and one entry we could not verify at all was replaced. Three additions — including two co-authors of the 2025 book Agentic Artificial Intelligence — bring in the field's agent-era turn. What survived is deliberately small: veterans, not influencers of the month.
How often is the list updated?
On the annual edition cycle, with corrections applied as we verify them. Automation careers are moving unusually fast right now — analysts becoming vendor evangelists, founders starting agent companies — so the 2027 edition changed most lines on the page. If a listed person's role has changed since, send us a current source and we will update the entry in place rather than waiting a year.
How can I get added to the list, or get an entry corrected?
Use the nominations page and make the case with evidence: measured programme results, research, or a book or talk the field cites. This list rewards people who published what automation actually delivered, including the failures. Corrections follow the same route — for example, if you can document an entry's current role better than we could, we would rather fix the record than defend it.
Why does this list lead with a forecast that 40% of agent projects will be cancelled?
Because it is the field's defining tension. Gartner's June 2025 forecast says more than 40% of agentic AI projects will be cancelled by the end of 2027, on costs, unclear value and weak risk controls — the same three causes that killed RPA programmes a decade ago. The people listed here diagnosed those failure modes first, which is why their RPA-era work reads as the agent era's best field manual.
Sources
- Pascal Bornet — Keynote Speaker (Agentic Artificial Intelligence, 2025) — Chartwell Speakers (2026)
- Agentic Artificial Intelligence (Irreplaceable Publishing, 14 March 2025) — Atlantic Books (2025)
- Please Join Us to Celebrate Mary Lacity's Retirement — University of Arkansas News (2026)
- Leslie P. Willcocks — Professor (Emeritus) — London School of Economics
- Blog 70 — Leslie Willcocks: What Is the Future of Automation and Digital Technologies? — Robotic and Cognitive Automation Blog (2025)
- Future of Work Webinar (Sarah Burnett, Chief Technology Evangelist, KYP.ai) — KYP.ai (2025)
- Closing Remarks Podcast: Ian Barkin on AI, Automation & Exit Readiness — Benchmark International (2026)
- The Story of Intelligent Automation with Ian Barkin — Masters of Automation (2026)
- A Conversation with Ian Barkin, MBA '06 (2B Ventures; David Brain) — MIT Sloan (2025)
- UiPath Named Leader in Everest Group 2025 Automation Ranking (Amardeep Modi, VP) — IT Brief Australia (2025)
- Amardeep Modi — Vice President — Everest Group (2026)
- Mint DIS 2023: Explainable AI Is Critical — Kashyap Kompella, RPA2AI (latest activity found) — TechCircle (2023)
- RPA: Here's Why Digital Labor Can Make or Break Your Organization (Frank Casale) — Appian (2018)
- Why 40% of AI Agent Projects Get Cancelled (reporting Gartner's 25 June 2025 forecast) — TheBlue.ai (2026)
- Gartner Predicts Agentic AI Will Autonomously Resolve 80% of Common Customer Service Issues Without Human Intervention by 2029 — Gartner (2025)
- Automation Anywhere Takes a Step Towards Artificial General Intelligence for Work (Imagine 2025; Mihir Shukla) — Automation Anywhere (2025)