Carbon CopyDevelopment

Insights

Practical notes on owning AI.

Where AI actually pays off in mid-market companies — and where it doesn't. Written for the people who run the P&L, not the people who run the servers.

3 min readAI strategy / Pilots / ROI

Why 95% of AI pilots never reach the P&L — and what the other 5% do differently

MIT research found that the overwhelming majority of enterprise GenAI pilots produce no measurable P&L impact. The failure pattern is consistent — and so is the fix.

Read the article →

3 min readOwnership / Build vs buy / SaaS spend

Stop renting AI: the case for bringing key software in-house

Every AI subscription your team adds is a lease on capability you could own. Here's a CFO-friendly framework for deciding what to rent, what to own, and how to tell the difference.

Read the article →

3 min readAI training / Adoption / Budgeting

Your AI budget is backwards: spend on people, not just tools

Companies are doubling AI spend, and most of it is going to software that ends up unused. The highest-ROI line item in an AI budget is the one that rarely appears in it.

Read the article →

The Owner's Brief newsletter launches soon — same perspective, delivered occasionally, unsubscribe anytime.

Reading is free. Knowing is $3,500.

The AI Opportunity Audit turns these principles into a ranked roadmap for your specific business — in three weeks, at a fixed price.

Explore the auditBook an intro call