The Spreadsheet Moment: Where AI Is Right Now
Spreadsheets worked beautifully in the hands of the person who built them. Then they tried to share them. AI is following the same pattern. Most organizations have the prototypes. Very few have the architect.
When spreadsheets arrived, something interesting happened.
Individuals across organizations started building things. Automations. Models. Workflows. Things that had never existed before because the tools to build them hadn't existed before.
The spreadsheets worked beautifully in the hands of the person who built them.
Then they tried to share them. Coordinate across teams. Scale them beyond the original creator.
They fell apart.
Not because the spreadsheet was wrong. Because a spreadsheet was never designed to be an organizational system. It was a personal productivity tool. The individual needed to build it to figure out what the real system should look like. Once they knew that, databases and custom software could do what spreadsheets could not.
The spreadsheet was the prototype. The enterprise system was the product.
AI is following the same pattern right now.
Individuals inside organizations are using ChatGPT and Claude to automate their own work. They are finding real productivity gains. They are also hitting the same wall. No mechanism to share. No mechanism to coordinate. No way to scale beyond the person who built it.
These are prototypes. Valuable ones. But prototypes.
The organizations that get this right will do what the best technology adopters did in the spreadsheet era. They will take what individuals have discovered works, understand what those prototypes are actually showing them about how work should flow, and build systems around them.
That translation from prototype to enterprise system rarely happens on its own. It requires someone who understands both what the individuals have built and what the organization needs the system to do.
That is the architectural work. Most organizations have the prototypes. Very few have the architect.