AI & The Enterprise-First Shift

While the consumer has been at the center of the commercial web paradigm for the last thirty years, creating a perception that technology is intrinsically consumer-driven, I want to show you why that’s not the case.

And how each technological paradigm has undergone a more nuanced development, often as a result of a first phase of adoption and infrastructure building undertaken by institutions and enterprises rather than consumers.

In short, I want to show you why the web, and the way it developed from a market perspective, has been more of an anomaly rather than the normality of how tech evolved.

Each technological paradigm follows a much more nuanced journey, where the involvement of enterprises, institutions, and outside consumers drives the initial stage of innovation.

And while consumer adoption makes a lot of noise, in reality, enterprise and institutional participation in the process is way more important than we like to believe.

And while the “commercial internet” (since 1995) was a consumer-first technological paradigm, in reality, things are far more nuanced in the AI era, so get ready for it!

Let’s see how.

Historical Context: A More Nuanced View

Let me show you how each technology cycle has developed through a different framework of early adoption and how the tech's ability to go from niche to scale has depended on and sits at the intersection of enterprise, institutions, and consumers.

I believe it’s critical to have this nuanced view if you’re in the business of AI so you can abandon “ideological perspectives” based on the notion that “technology only progresses via consumer adoption” or “we live in a consumer-driven world,” with a more critical view of the industry.

If you’re an entrepreneur, investor, or business executive, you know you can add value to the industry at different levels.

So whether you pick to work on enterprise, institutional part, or consumer, it’ll be more a choice of personal preferences and where you see yourself to fit in rather than driven by the buzz of ideology.