Is Your Technology Dictating Your Vision?
How Organizations are Sacrificing Value by Conforming to the Tech
While standing at a lectern at Rice University on September 12, 1962, President John F. Kennedy articulated a vision. The US was to land a person on the moon and return them safely to earth within the decade. At the time of the speech, the technology to do what President Kennedy envisioned did not exist. There were pieces of technology that may have been in the vicinity such as rudimentary rockets and jet propulsion, but those technologies would not get people to the moon. If we wanted to get to the moon, we needed specialized equipment. Equipment that we could not buy off the shelf. Close enough would not cut it.
Had President Kennedy and the NASA officials around him accepted what was on the shelf, they would have failed. The articulated vision required specialized equipment that would not be made into commercially available products and services until over a half century later. The story of putting the first humans on the moon started with an articulated vision that included a clear goal. It required technology to achieve so it is the perfect lens through which to view how current organizational leaders are considering integrating AI into their business processes and missions.
Right now, there’s a problem. Too many leaders are taking what’s easily available off the shelf and are falling short of their goals. The problem is that too many leaders are allowing technology to dictate their vision. At the heart of this question is one that was answered 250 years ago. Do you need a generalist or a specialist? Translated for 2025, is a generalized, cloud-native AI solution what you need, or do you need AI that is designed specifically for your business problem? But the best question is whether you are allowing the technology to dictate your vision.
Literal Moonshot
The history of the early space program is well documented. Of particular interest is how not just a single organization but multiple organizations were galvanized to pursue a single vision. Achieving the vision in the prescribed timeline required extraordinary innovation and drive. Traditional, and in some cases comfortable, processes had to be scrapped and organizational cultures had to be revisited. This seems like a tall order in 2025, but it is what is required to achieve extraordinary results.
2025 is turning out to be the year where AI gets real for a lot of companies.
Since the introduction of ChatGPT and those that followed, how exactly AI gets integrated into business processes to create value has been the subject of study and debate. But this approach has a major failure. When talking about how to bring in AI, you are starting at a place from which the technology begins to dictate your vision. Many organizations naturally look out at the market and see products such as:
Microsoft Copilot
OpenAI ChatGPT
Anthropic’s Claude
Google’s Gemini
Meta’s Llama
These products are heavily marketed, easy to buy, and some come with existing SaaS subscriptions. However, these products are also highly generalized to be as widely appealing as possible. They also are the result of the pursuit of artificial general intelligence (AGI), which requires unimaginable quantities of data and seemingly unending demand for compute and energy. These products are easy to buy but they don’t solve the problem. They are the equivalent to jet engines and rockets in 1962. They are fine products, but they won’t get us to the moon.
Solving the Problem
Engineers in the Gemini and Apollo programs couldn’t wait around for the market to demand the equipment they needed. If they had, they would have waited until almost the 2020s, around 60 years after they needed it. Instead, they built the equipment they needed to serve the vision.
At Frontier Foundry, we work closely with clients from government to the legal industry to financial services. In each of these verticals, we have seen this debate take place. Are we “integrating AI” or do we have a vision that AI will enable? By far, the most successful firms are those that have a vision first then seek technology. Another common characteristic is the recognition of the requirements of that mission. Requirements such as:
1. Data Privacy
2. Specialized Data
3. Security
4. Customized Outputs
5. Transparency and Auditability
These five factors are common across AI users. Here is an example from a legal client.
Legal Defense
Vision: Quickly identify police officers with previous disciplinary issues.
Requirements: Data must be kept private to protect attorney-client privilege. On-premise server. API plugins for external data. Access for over 40 staff attorneys.
Solution: A customized and fully automated AI system with a private large language model (LLM) interface to allow attorneys to ask plain language questions to a large quantity of unstructured data.
Result: Legal defense attorneys saved hundreds of hours of research time and are instead able to spend those hours preparing clients. The firm overall can take on more total cases. The firm no longer must pay for outside first round discovery analysis providing direct cost savings.
Impact: The quality of the firm’s defense services was greatly enhanced providing better services to clients and giving a competitive advantage over competitors.
This is an example where the vision came first, and the technology was built to fit the vision. We’ve seen many other examples of this and examples of the other way around. We know from history that strong visions can produce extraordinary results.
In 2025, companies should look for AI partners that are willing to build and grow solutions with them, not simply sell a generalized product off the shelf and work toward upselling throughout the life of the contract.
Here are some questions to ask yourself to determine whether you are working with the right partner and whether the technology is dictating your vision:
What is the problem I need to solve agnostic of technology?
How will I measure success in solving this problem?
If I was hiring a human to solve this problem, what skills would I need?
Are those skills generalized/generic or specialized?
Is the AI product I’m using designed for my purpose?
Can the AI product be customized for my purpose?
To what extent is customization and collaboration a part of my vendor’s culture and approach?
Will an off the shelf AI product give you competitive advantage?
Many companies are taking their own moonshots and seeing AI as a way to get there. However, there is a genuine opportunity to stand out from the crowd at a moment when everyone is looking to generic AI models. Leaders and organizations with clear visions who do not allow the broadly available AI models to dictate their visions will separate from the pack. Just as NASA would not have gotten to the moon using 1960s jet engines, your organization will likewise not realize its vision with generic AI. The trick is that customizing AI is simpler today than it has ever been. Advancements in AI technology create capabilities for companies to define their vision and have the AI built to the vision. This is an exciting moment technologically, but even more exciting as a business leader.
Think about what you would do if you were unencumbered by what you see from leading technology vendors. What if you didn’t have to sacrifice data privacy or security? This is how you land your organization on the moon with a lead that competitors may never overcome.