Strategic AI Advisory

Most AI pilots don't make it to production. I've spent a lot of time thinking about why.

I work with specialised organisations to turn scattered AI experiments into something more systematic — helping build the internal capability to verify and ship with confidence.

Usually a 30-minute chat. No decks required.

David Kolb — AI strategy advisor and educator

Industries

Financial services Scientific & healthcare services Water & environmental services Public sector & civil society Events & information Design & fintech Retail Hospitality

Education

Imperial College Business School MIT xPRO Northwestern Kellogg IDEO U

The technology is never the hard part.

The hard part is designing systems that work the way people actually work — imperfect, cautious, and accountable. The organisations getting real value from AI right now aren't waiting for it to be perfect. They're designing the human judgment around it.

What I've learnt from the post-pilot reality

In my experience, most organisations aren't short of AI pilots. What they're often missing is a reliable path to trusted deployment.

The bottleneck is usually verification

Teams can build impressive demos — that part's not the problem. The harder question is whether you can trust those outputs enough to put them in front of a customer or a regulator. That's often where things stall.

Good governance should accelerate, not block

The organisations that actually scale tend to be the ones designing governance to say "yes, safely" — clear guardrails that enable speed, rather than committees that slow everything down.

I think capability matters more than dependency

The goal isn't really a successful project. It's building an organisation where your own people can evaluate, govern, and ship — without waiting for external help every time.

How this tends to play out

The work isn't usually about adding more pilots. It's more about changing the ratio of ideas to things that actually get deployed.

From Ideas to Deployments Global Testing & Certification Company Food safety & life sciences · Europe
From Licences to Value Global Information Business Events & information · Global
From Drafts to Decisions Regulated Technical Services Water & environmental · UK
From Shadow AI to Safe Harbour Healthcare Infrastructure Healthcare · UK
From Skills to Practice Global Fintech Design & fintech · UK
From Theory to Judgment Civic Leadership Programme Peacebuilding & civic leadership · Northern Ireland

If this resonates with where you are

If you're past "should we do AI?" and thinking about how to actually make this work — I'd be happy to have a conversation.

Start a conversation

— David