When I advise enterprises on AI adoption, one thing becomes clear quickly: most people looking up “agentic AI design patterns” end up reading about academic patterns like Reflection, Tool Use, ReAct, Planning, and Multi-Agent.
These patterns describe cognitive behaviors like how an AI thinks, plans, or interacts. They’re fascinating, but they rarely translate directly into systems that work reliably in enterprise workflows.
From where I sit as a CTO, enterprises need patterns that are actionable, scalable, and aligned with business objectives.
That’s why I focus on practical design patterns like Task-Oriented Agents, Multi-Agent Collaboration, Self-Improving Agents, RAG Agents, and Orchestrator Agents. These are built for real-world implementation.
Here’s a quick mapping of research patterns to practical enterprise analogs: