The most expensive mistake organizations make with AI isn’t buying the wrong tool—it’s believing that AI transformation can be centrally planned and executed.
The research is unequivocal on this point: Organizations succeed when they decentralize implementation authority while maintaining accountability.
This isn’t delegation—it’s revolution. It means accepting that the sales team knows more about sales AI needs than the CTO does. It means letting customer service managers pick their own tools. It means—horror of horrors—trusting your employees.
Central AI labs, those gleaming monuments to corporate innovation, are where AI initiatives go to become PowerPoint presentations. They’re disconnected from actual users, obsessed with technical metrics that don’t matter, and staffed by people who haven’t done the actual work they’re trying to automate.
Meanwhile, “prosumers”—employees already using personal AI tools—are achieving massive productivity gains in the shadows. They’re not waiting for IT approval. They’re not filling out procurement forms. They’re just solving problems, and they’re doing it with $20-per-month ChatGPT subscriptions while their companies spend millions on enterprise tools that nobody uses.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
