Filed under AI adoption.
Notes, numbers, and hard-won lessons from helping small and medium-sized businesses actually put AI to work. No think-pieces, no vendor takes — just what the math said after we ran it.
Bolt a motor to a line shaft and you’ve still got a line shaft
Paul David's 1990 paper explains why electricity took 40 years to show up in productivity statistics: factories bolted motors onto steam-era line shafts. AI seats on unchanged workflows repeat the mistake.
Cuban’s right. The AI bill is for the workflow you never rebuilt.
Mark Cuban on Big Technology Podcast: F500s waste money on AI because they're running the business the way they always have. ROI comes from rebuilding the workflow on AI — not bolting AI on the old one. SMBs have the asymmetric advantage.
Ken Griffin Went Home Fairly Depressed
Ken Griffin called AI "garbage" at Davos in January 2026. Four months later at Stanford GSB, the $50B Citadel founder came home "fairly depressed" because AI agents now do in hours what his PhD finance team does in months. The reversal is the story.
You can just install Claude Code tonight
You don't need a steering committee to use AI. Twenty dollars, one evening, and one workflow gets you further than a 90-day evaluation.