David Alvo
David is the CEO of Flowcraft. He writes a weekly column on AI as a general purpose technology: what the history of electricity, the internet and the shipping container says about how organizations should adopt AI today.
CEO, Flowcraft Articles (16)
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Beyond the hype: AI isn't the box, it's the port
The shipping container took two decades to change logistics because the value was never in the box. It was in the port that had to be redesigned around it. AI is following the same script.
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The Doubt That Costs More Than the Risk
The real barrier to adopting AI is no longer the technology, it's uncertainty about data. Waiting doesn't resolve it: the company that waits runs the same risk, just without rules.
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Nobody Is in Charge of Thinking
Producing became free. Understanding didn't. And almost no org chart has someone whose job, evaluated and paid, is to say out loud that we still don't understand the problem.
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The Productivity That Gets Paid For at the Next Desk
Poorly thought-out work doesn't disappear, it moves. Much of the savings companies attribute to AI shows up at one desk while the cost shows up at another.
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There's a Statistic for Every Side. AI Is No Exception.
There's a study proving AI fails and another proving the opposite. The real question isn't which one is right, but whether your organization will learn to use the tool or keep waiting for the numbers to agree.
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Chile Won the AI Race. It's Still Falling Short on Impact.
Chile leads AI adoption in Latin America, but only 3.6% of companies capture real value. The bottleneck isn't the technology, it's process redesign and people.
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By 2036, Saying 'We Have an AI Strategy' Will Sound as Strange as Saying 'We Have an Internet Strategy' Does Today.
Ten columns, one argument: artificial intelligence is a general purpose technology, and the window to build advantage before it normalizes is open right now.
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Amazon, eBay, and Google Were Built on Dial-Up. None of Them Waited for Broadband.
Only 29% of developers trust what AI generates. A study found programmers are 19% slower using it. This is not an argument for waiting. It's exactly the opposite argument.
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From 26% to 76% in One Year: Every Company Is Hiring a Chief AI Officer. IBM — the Same IBM from 1997 — Has None.
The fastest-growing executive role in recent corporate history might also be the most temporary. The same IBM that invented the separate internet department in 1997 decided not to repeat the mistake.
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Having an AI Chatbot in 2026 Is Like Having a Website in 1999.
88% of companies already use AI. Only 21% redesigned anything to take advantage of it. McKinsey measured twenty-five factors to explain who sees real impact — and process redesign wins by a mile.
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Amazon Just Surpassed Walmart as the World's Largest Company. It Took Thirty-Two Years.
In 1994, Walmart outranked Amazon on every metric. Thirty-two years later, Amazon holds the top spot on the Fortune 500. The difference wasn't the size of the bet — it was where they placed it.
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AI Reached 1.2 Billion Users in Under Three Years. It Took the Internet a Decade.
AI was adopted faster than any technology in history. If your company is still running on the mental calendar of the 1990s internet, it's already making decisions based on an assumption that isn't true.
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In 1987 They Said They Couldn't See Computers in the Productivity Numbers. They Recently Said the Same About AI.
The Solow Paradox is nearly forty years old and just reappeared applied to AI. If your ROI still isn't showing up, it may be exactly where economic history says it should be.
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You Installed the Electric Motor. You Forgot to Redesign the Factory.
The electric motor existed in 1880. It took forty years to change factory productivity. The reason explains exactly why your AI still isn't delivering what it promised.
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Walmart Gave the Internet Its Own CEO. It Took Sixteen Years to Undo That.
In 2000, Walmart spun Walmart.com off as a separate company. It took sixteen years to undo it. The parallel with today's AI offices is too precise to ignore.
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There Are Two GPTs. Your Company Only Knows One.
Everyone is obsessed with the wrong GPT. While companies fight over the best model, they're ignoring the structural pattern that already predicted how this story ends.
David Alvo