The Real GenAI Bottleneck? Nobody Gets Rewarded If It Works.
There’s no shortage of GenAI demos inside large enterprises right now. Chatbots, copilots, summarizers — pick your flavor. From polished PowerPoint decks to slick internal showcases, AI is being pitched as the solution to everything.
But look a little closer and you’ll find something missing. Not in the tech. In the traction.
The AI model works. The chatbot responds. The dashboards light up. But after the demo? Nothing happens. No adoption. No rollout. No measurable impact.
Why? Because no one actually owns the outcome.
That’s the real problem: the bottleneck isn’t AI capability. It’s the absence of clear ownership.
GenAI Is the Easy Part
Let’s be honest. In 2025, spinning up a GenAI prototype isn’t hard. The tools are mature. The APIs are accessible. The ecosystem is exploding.
Need a chatbot for customer service? Fine-tune GPT. Want faster reporting? Plug into Claude or Gemini. Looking to generate legal summaries? There’s a model for that, too.
You don’t need 12 months and a dev army. You need 2 weeks and a clear use case.
Which begs the question: if the technology is ready and the benefits are obvious, why aren’t enterprises moving faster?
Because the hard part isn’t the build. It’s the buy-in.
Inside most large organizations, AI pilots are born in silos:
- Innovation teams, tasked with exploration but lacking execution power.
- IT departments, wired for governance and risk — not growth.
They produce prototypes. Host demos. Check the “innovation” box. But when it comes time to operationalize?
Crickets.
When Nobody Owns It, Nothing Moves
Let’s map the life cycle of a typical GenAI project:
- An innovation lead sponsors a proof of concept.
- A cross-functional team builds something impressive.
- A pilot gets launched with cautious optimism.
- Internal buzz rises — “This could be big!”
- Six months later: no adoption, no champion, no budget.
What happened?
- No single accountable owner tied to the outcome.
- No business sponsor with decision-making power.
- No one with the mandate to move from test to traction.
This is the same pattern we’ve seen in corporate venture building: promising concepts die in the “Valley of Death” between prototype and scale.
In venture language, it’s a failed Series A. In enterprise language, it’s a good idea with no traction.
And here’s the kicker: the problem isn’t that no one cares. It’s that no one is responsible.
Startups Move Because Someone Is Accountable
In startups, momentum is a survival mechanism. There’s always a founder. There’s urgency, driven by capital, deadlines, and outcomes.
If the AI project works? It creates value. If it doesn’t? The team pivots, learns, iterates.
But inside corporates?
- The project manager might get a slide in the QBR.
- The sponsoring exec may rotate out of role next quarter.
- If it works, the outcome is diffuse. If it fails, the consequences are unclear.
No clear ownership. No forward motion.
That’s not innovation. That’s theater.
Clarify Ownership Before You Scale AI
If you want GenAI to deliver real business impact, you need more than code. You need accountability.
Here’s what that looks like:
1. Appoint a clear Product Owner
Someone with authority and accountability. Not a committee. Not a function. A person. With a name, a mandate, and the power to act.
2. Attach the project to a business goal
Whether it’s cost reduction, cycle time, revenue per user — tie the success to a metric that matters. Ownership must come with a target.
3. Allocate real budget
Don’t make teams beg for leftover innovation scraps. Fund it like a product, not a pet project. Ownership without resources is a trap.
4. Define kill criteria upfront
Set boundaries: if we don’t see X result by Y date, we stop. This creates urgency and focus. Ownership must include decision rights to stop as well as scale.
5. Let ownership drive visibility
Celebrate results. Surface blockers. Make it clear who leads the charge. Visibility reinforces accountability.
These aren’t radical suggestions. They’re how real business gets done. But in GenAI, we’ve skipped the basics in pursuit of buzz.
The Innovation Isn’t the AI. It’s the Organizational Will
Generative AI is the most powerful toolset to hit enterprise in decades. But tools don’t create value. People do.
And people only move fast when someone owns the mission.
So if your AI pilots are stalling, don’t ask, “What else should we build?”
Ask: Who owns this? Who is accountable for making it real?
Until you can name that person, your real bottleneck isn’t technology.
It’s the absence of ownership.
Looking to work with a team of experts that know how to really get AI applications scaled up? Why not reach out: hello@minglabs.com
Writer:
Sebastian Mueller — Founding Partner, MING Labs
