5 quick flash ways to ensure your AI project doesn’t become an expensive pet.

We’ve all seen it happen.

A shiny new AI project lands in the business with big promises.

Excitement. Investment. A flashy demo.

But fast forward six months, and it’s sitting in the corner like an overfed pug wearing a bowtie.

Adored by its creators. Unadopted by the rest of the company.

Let’s be honest—too many AI initiatives become expensive pets.

They look good on a PowerPoint, they make noise when you poke them, but they don’t create real business value.

So, here are 5 quick flash ways to make sure your AI impacts your bottom line.

1. Kill the Toy Mindset — Frame It Around Outcomes

AI is not a side project.

It’s not a tech team hobby.

It’s a business capability, and it needs a job to do.

Before you build anything, finish this sentence:

👉 “This AI will improve ______ by ______ and we’ll know it’s working when ______.”

No outcome? No build.

2. Start Small, but Show Value Fast

The most successful AI projects don’t start with vision—they start with velocity.

Pick one use case. One workflow. One dashboard.

Build it. Launch it. Learn from it.

Every win becomes a case study.

And momentum beats perfection.

3. Bring Business and Tech Into the Same Room (Literally)

AI fails when IT builds something business doesn’t use.

Or business dreams up something tech can’t deliver.

That’s why we created Slid3rs — to bring both sides together in real time to co-prioritise, score feasibility, and align on where AI will drive impact.

👀 Want fewer PowerPoints and more progress?

Put humans and machines in the same space—with shared clarity.

4. Design for Decision, Not Just Insight

Insight is interesting.

Decision is everything.

A good AI model doesn’t just analyse data—it moves someone to do something.

Design your outputs like calls to action, not just pretty charts.

Ask:

→ Who sees this?

→ What do they need to know?

→ What action should it trigger?

5. Treat Change Management Like a Feature, Not an Afterthought

Your AI might be clever. But if people don’t trust it, use it, or know why it exists, it’s dead on arrival.

Rollout isn’t just training. It’s narrative design.

It’s internal marketing.

It’s onboarding, feedback loops, and psychological ownership.

Your AI isn’t successful when it’s built.

It’s successful when people believe it’s part of how they win.

🚀 Final Thought: No More Expensive Pets

At Forever Foundry, we help organisations move from proof of concept to proof of impact.

Slid3rs gives you a fast, collaborative format to score, align, and prioritise AI use cases—before anyone writes a line of code.

Let’s stop building pets.

Let’s start building AI that actually pulls its weight.

✋ Want to see how your AI projects score before you invest?

Let’s run them through the Slid3rs framework in The Foundry.