Forward deployed engineers bridge the gap between software platforms and customer reality. The role, pioneered at Palantir and seeing 800% growth in job postings, fails catastrophically when filled by people without real coding skills.
Most AI strategies are elaborate 50-slide performances designed to impress investors and boards. Steve Blank calls this innovation theater. RAND reports more than 80% of AI projects fail because the boring operational work that creates actual value gets ignored.
Most AI vendor evaluation checklists obsess over model capabilities while ignoring what actually determines success: whether the vendor picks up the phone when your implementation breaks at 3am. RAND Corporation research shows more than 80% of AI projects fail, and 85% of companies miss AI cost forecasts by more than 10%.
MIT research shows 95 percent of AI pilots fail to deliver value, yet traditional AI maturity models keep pushing companies through expensive levels. Five contextual factors predict success better than any maturity score.
ChatGPT Enterprise promises transformation but delivers complexity. BBVA built nearly 3,000 custom GPTs in five months and most were abandoned. From maintenance nightmares to quality variance, here is the real implementation story.
RAND Corporation data shows 80% of AI projects fail. Not because the technology breaks. After watching dozens of implementations crash and burn, the pattern is unmistakable. Organizations fail because they forget they are asking humans to change how they work, not machines to compute faster.