Strategy5 min
Your AI strategy probably shouldn't start with AI.
Most AI programmes are technology projects looking for a business sponsor. Reverse the order.
The pattern is familiar. A working group forms, a budget appears, a list of use cases is collected, and eighteen months later the honest summary is that the company learned a lot.
The failure is not technical. It is that the programme started from the capability rather than from the constraint the business is actually paying for.
Start instead from a business advantage you want to create, or a cost you cannot get out of. Then ask what capability would have to exist. Only then ask whether AI is the cheapest route to that capability.
Frequently it isn't. Frequently the answer is a pricing change, a partnership, or removing a process nobody has questioned since 2014.
That is not an argument against AI. It is an argument for making AI compete for the budget like everything else.
Written by Hendrik van Iterson, Technology & AI Executive, Amsterdam.