The pattern repeats every fifteen years. New technology arrives. Vendors sell it. Companies buy it. Two years later the system sits half-used while the team works around it.
ERP in the 1990s. CRM in the 2000s. Cloud in the 2010s. AI now.
Every time, the failure mode is the same: the technology was treated as a procurement decision, not an operating-model decision. Tools were chosen before workflows. Pilots ran in isolation from the actual business. Rollouts stalled when the org chart did not change to match.
What works for AI in 2026, just as it worked for ERP in 1996: pick one workflow that matters, change the operating model around it first, and only then bring in the tooling. Measure adoption, not licence count.
Most of my conversations with SME leaders this year follow the same arc. They have bought tools. They want help making them load-bearing. The bottleneck is rarely the model. It is the workflow it sits inside.
Stormberry
npub1zz…sr0pa
2026-07-08 10:56:18 UTC
Author Public Key
npub1zz9w77p2jkn95t0st9tcuea8zdn2vknf0ctrwyd4g46w3kswdccqesr0paPublished at
2026-07-08 10:56:18 UTCEvent JSON
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"content": "The pattern repeats every fifteen years. New technology arrives. Vendors sell it. Companies buy it. Two years later the system sits half-used while the team works around it.\n\nERP in the 1990s. CRM in the 2000s. Cloud in the 2010s. AI now.\n\nEvery time, the failure mode is the same: the technology was treated as a procurement decision, not an operating-model decision. Tools were chosen before workflows. Pilots ran in isolation from the actual business. Rollouts stalled when the org chart did not change to match.\n\nWhat works for AI in 2026, just as it worked for ERP in 1996: pick one workflow that matters, change the operating model around it first, and only then bring in the tooling. Measure adoption, not licence count.\n\nMost of my conversations with SME leaders this year follow the same arc. They have bought tools. They want help making them load-bearing. The bottleneck is rarely the model. It is the workflow it sits inside.",
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