When AI investments underperform, the post-mortem usually devolves into debate: “The business didn’t adopt it.” “The data wasn’t ready.” “IT didn’t integrate it.” “The vendor overpromised.” All of that may be true. But the deeper problem is governance: the investment was approved on assumptions that were never made explicit—so nobody can own them, monitor them, or trigger decisions when they break. When assumptions remain implicit, accountability becomes politics. Everyone can claim success....

Most AI business cases still feel “clean” because they’re built from what’s easy to count: licenses, a project team, maybe some IT time. That’s not AI economics. AI economics don’t live in purchase orders. They live in activities —the recurring work required to keep the tool producing usable, decision-grade outputs at scale. The costs you don’t see (until you can’t ignore them) If you want total cost of ownership (TCO), stop asking “what did we buy?” and start asking “what work did we...

It's Saturday and over morning coffee ☕ I started looking at facts about accounting - historical and current. Here is what I found: 1️⃣ Management accounting predates financial accounting. Cost tracking for internal decisions existed centuries before standardized financial statements were a thing. Owners cared about control long before compliance. 2️⃣ Standard costing was basically the original “performance dashboard.” Variances were an early form of KPI monitoring—long before BI tools,...