Companies have hired big-name consultancies to guide them on genAI use cases and such. The catch? Those consultancies have failed to deliver:

Clients quickly encountered a mismatch between the pitch and what consultants could actually deliver. They found that consultants, who often had no more expertise on AI than they did internally, struggled to deploy use cases that created real business value.

(Source: WSJ, "How the AI Boom Is Leaving Consultants Behind")

The entire article is quote after quote of client frustration. Some accuse the consultancies of having woefully insufficient genAI experience, handing over expensive-yet-empty reports, and learning about genAI on the clients' dime.

You might think that the takeaway lesson is to avoid AI consultancies altogether. Not true!

Instead, the lesson is to choose your consulting partners wisely.

AI is hot, which makes it easy for someone to talk the talk without walking the walk. A slick website here, a confident sales pitch there, and they're closing deals for which they are woefully underqualified.

By comparison, other AI consultants – myself included! – have been here since the early days of data science and predictive analytics. We've spent 15+ years understanding data fundamentals. We know where data science fits in an organization and what it means to develop and deploy ML/AI models. We've established a public record of our expertise: conference talks, books, articles, and blog posts in which we share our knowledge and expound on practical approaches to AI.

(Case in point: I've been talking about data strategy since at least 2010, and finally published my thoughts in 2016.)

So as you look for help surfacing AI use cases, or defining strategy, or performing R&D:

Beware the newly-minted AI experts.

Look for someone who's actually been there.

And if you'd like to work with me on these matters: feel free to reach out.