Fortune 500 enterprise · Anonymised · Innovation · 2025
Where does AI actually create value — and where is it theatre?
An enterprise AI opportunity, taken from a loud agenda item to an evidence-based go/no-go the executive team could actually act on. A study of method — no confidential detail.
Innovation Manager
Opportunity discovery → business case
Executive investment decision
The premise
Every enterprise has AI on the agenda. Few have it on evidence.
The pressure to “do something with AI” produces confident slides and expensive pilots that quietly go nowhere. The real question isn’t whether AI is powerful — it’s which opportunity, in this business, clears the bar of strategic fit, ROI, feasibility and organisational readiness. That question is answered with research, not enthusiasm.
The work
From hypothesis to a case you can fund.
Discovery & research
Stakeholder discovery across senior leaders, SMEs, finance and technology; market and competitive research to size the real opportunity, not the imagined one.
Proof-of-concept validation
Designed experiments and POCs to test the load-bearing assumptions — the ones that, if wrong, sink the whole case — before any money moved.
The four-way test
Assessed strategic fit, ROI potential, implementation feasibility and organisational readiness — a decision needs all four, not just a compelling demo.
The recommendation
A business case and go/no-go proposal, presented to executive sponsors — clear enough to fund, honest enough to kill.
AI can map the problem space. It can’t tell you which problem is worth your money. That judgement is the work.