The proliferation of one-size-fits-all “best practices,” of sanitized case studies from Silicon Valley darlings, of “best vs. the rest” narratives, has created an environment where just about everybody working within the real-world constraints of most companies’ business and funding models will never feel like their companies are doing things “the right way.”
So if I’m correct, then the future of build vs buy will be “yes to both.” Companies will continue to buy complex and valuable component services for important parts of their business, but these components will be designed to be accessed and controlled by both humans and software. Some of that software will be AI agents acting on our behalf, and some will be customer (or system integrator) defined workflows generated from gen AI tools.
Great thinking isn't about getting to the answer fastest. It's about exploring the problem space thoroughly enough to find the best answer—or sometimes, to redefine the question itself. AI allows us to accelerate this exploratory process. It lets us rapidly test multiple approaches, challenge our assumptions, and refine our thinking in real time. But only if we engage with it as a collaborative partner rather than a vending machine.
