Around the same time, the Financial Times published a piece noting that while investors are betting on AI-fueled chaos and disruption, history tells a different story. Past technological revolutions—from the PC to the internet and cloud—rarely wiped out incumbents. Savvy established players adapted, integrated the new capabilities, and often emerged stronger.

Reading these together crystallized something I’ve been observing in our work at Datarella and across the broader tech landscape: the most probable path for AI in business is neither a dystopian job apocalypse nor a chaotic upending of entire industries. It’s a pragmatic, evolutionary integration — one that rewards organizations willing to embrace AI’s inherent “weirdness” while building solid foundations to prevent disorder.

As someone who has spent decades building companies and helping enterprises navigate digital transformation, I believe this balanced view is crucial. AI won’t replace everything overnight, but it will reshape how we work — if we let it.

Why AI So Often “Dies” in Traditional IT Settings

Mollick’s diagnosis rings especially true because we see this pattern repeatedly in enterprise environments. AI isn’t deterministic software with predictable, repeatable outputs. It’s generative, highly context-dependent, and frequently surprising. When handed over to IT teams whose primary mandates are security, compliance, uptime, and cost control, the instinctive reaction is understandable but often counterproductive:

• Wrapping every experiment in lengthy approval processes
• Demanding detailed ROI projections before any meaningful pilot
• Forcing AI into legacy tech stacks without rethinking underlying workflows
• Prioritizing only the safest, most obvious use cases

The outcome? Countless pilots that never scale. Recent analyses, including Deloitte’s 2026 State of AI in the Enterprise, show that while employee access to AI tools has exploded, the move from experimentation to full production remains limited. Issues like poor data quality, skills gaps, and overly cautious governance continue to create friction.

Harvard Business Review has noted a similar phenomenon: widespread AI usage paired with disappointing returns, with adoption often stalling at the integration stage. The core mistake isn’t poor execution—it’s treating AI like just another CRM or ERP module rather than a fundamentally new way of thinking and working.

History Offers Reason for Optimism

The Financial Times article provides a reassuring counterpoint. Technology revolutions rarely play out as pure creative destruction. Incumbents who invest in complementary capabilities—new skills, redesigned processes, and updated organizational structures—tend to adapt and thrive.

In 2026, I expect the real winners won’t be only the flashy AI-native startups. They will be established companies that intelligently combine their deep domain expertise and proprietary data with AI’s capabilities. Those who redesign workflows for genuine human-AI collaboration (sometimes called “co-intelligence”) and scale thoughtfully from pilots to enterprise-grade agentic systems will gain the edge.

Reports from PwC and others speak of a “disciplined march to value”: clear strategies, measurable outcomes, and governance frameworks that protect without suffocating innovation.

What the Most Likely Future of AI in Business Looks Like

Looking ahead to late 2026 and 2027, here’s the trajectory I consider most probable:

1. Scaling from pilots to production — More organizations will move a significantly higher share of AI projects into live use, particularly through agentic AI systems that handle multi-step workflows autonomously.
2. The J‑curve of productivity — Expect initial periods of flat or even negative returns as companies rewire processes and roles. Once the complementary changes (new data pipelines, decision protocols, and team structures) are in place, gains should accelerate sharply.
3. Governance maturing — Robust frameworks for responsible agentic AI, data quality, and risk management will become standard. “Shadow AI” will gradually decline as secure, enterprise-ready platforms improve.
4. Incumbents leveraging their data moats — Organizations with clean, well-governed data and strong domain knowledge — especially in regulated or complex industries—will often outperform pure AI disruptors.

This isn’t a utopian revolution or a total failure. It’s an evolutionary transformation, provided we avoid the trap of over-standardizing AI too early.

Five Practical Principles for Embracing AI’s Weirdness

Drawing from Mollick’s insights, historical patterns, and the latest enterprise reports, here are the principles I believe forward-thinking leaders should adopt:

1. Deliberately embrace the weirdness — Create space for teams to experiment and discover unexpected applications. Encourage “labs” or crowdsourced exploration. Treat AI as a creative collaborator rather than a simple automation engine.
2. Invest in rock-solid data foundations — Data quality and governance remain the biggest barriers. Without trustworthy, well-integrated data, even the most advanced models produce unreliable results. This is an area where specialized expertise in unifying silos and building real-time, compliant pipelines makes a decisive difference.
3. Redesign workflows for human-AI co-intelligence — The goal isn’t to automate jobs out of existence but to augment human strengths. Let people focus on judgment, creativity, and relationships while AI handles analysis, drafting, and routine tasks.
4. Deploy governed, secure agentic systems — Autonomous agents represent the next frontier, but they require thoughtful orchestration, threat modeling, and compliance built in from the start.
5. Measure what truly matters and iterate patiently — Look beyond vanity metrics. Track real business impact—revenue, cost efficiency, customer outcomes—and accept that returns often follow a J‑curve.

Reflections from the Trenches

At Datarella, we’ve been helping organizations move past the hype and pilot purgatory for years. Our focus on secure AI agent development, full-stack modernization, privacy-preserving architectures, and (where appropriate) decentralized approaches is designed precisely for this moment: enabling companies to harness AI’s strange power without inviting chaos.

Whether it’s building production-ready autonomous agents, creating reliable data platforms, or integrating AI into complex legacy environments, the key is combining technical depth with practical business judgment.

The future of AI in business isn’t about tearing down your existing structures or gambling on total disruption. It’s about evolving how your organization learns, decides, and creates value—by thoughtfully embracing AI as the odd, powerful tool it is, while strengthening the data, governance, and cultural foundations it requires.

If you’re ready to move from interesting pilots to scalable impact—without letting AI “die in IT”—I’d be happy to explore how we can support your journey.

Let’s connect.

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DIAM is the Decentralized Invisual Art Marketplace. It intends to value a new form of creativity, a new form of art: Invisual Art. The idea of DIAM is to unleash creativity on a global scale. DIAM’s dream is to augment human beings through art. On DIAM, art lovers can purchase invisual art experiences using $OCEAN, a crypto-currency that uniquely and in an unforgeable way guarantees the purchase of art experiences. DIAM’s decentralized architecture allows artists to showcase their work and present their art in a completely autonomous process, guaranteeing them a fair share of income.

Invisual Art

Invisual art is art that exists other than in the form of artworks. The practices of invisual art have in common the fact of existing other than in the form of a work of art. There is no definition of invisual art, if not this common point. Invisual art is an art that exists most often as an experience and not as an object. The invisual practices are extremely varied: lifestyle, behaviors, experiments, state of mind

DIAM Goals

• To enable invisual artists to make a living from their work;
• To enable anyone to become an artist through the valuation of their invisual creativity;
• To provide a tool to encourage inventiveness in art by mixing the latest technologies with the latest form of art in order to build the next-generation art market;
• To encourage the emergence of new types of collectors and investors in art;
• Marketing art as an experience.

How To Buy Invisual Art?

At the official DIAM launch event on 11 November 2022, my friend Alexandre Gurita, Director of the Biennale de Paris and of the Ecole Nationale d’Art (ENDA), and Corina Mila, Enseignante-Chercheuse at the University of Paris-Sorbonne, introduced the audience to the concept of Invisual Art. Michael Reuter, Co-founder & CEO of Datarella, and Rebecca L. Johnson, CTO of Datarella, have demonstrated how to buy invisual art at DIAM using datatokens. Special guest Casey Herd, Artistic Director of BALLET RISING, has explained how DIAM enables Ballet lovers all over the world to immerse in the ballet experience using DIAM datatokens.

Feel free to register for free and experience the latest development at the intersection of technology and art!

If you are interested to learn more about the Decentralized Invisual Art Marketplace, feel free to follow DIAM on Twitter, and LinkedIn and discuss all things invisual art with the DIAM team – see you there!

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Why Donating Must Be Changed!

Time and again, potential donors wonder how difficult it still is, to donate to the right cause, and in an efficient and fun way. Often, you can’t donate using your mobile, or can’t even donate online. Then, you would donate to a certain general topic, rather than to a specific project. Last, but not least, as a donor, you can’t track and trace the path of your donation. Many potential donors are put off by clunky, complex, and intransparent donation processes. Given a huge amount of spare money many people in the rich parts of our world have available for being spent to a good cause, this is a wasted opportunity.

Enter SmartAid! 

Efficient, and easy-to-use, the blockchain-based web app does not only make donating fun but offers fervently desired transparency of the money flows: Right after having donated between 1 – 199 Euro, the donation will be stored on the SmartAid blockchain. The donor receives a tracking code to trace her donation until it reaches its destination. This so-called “traceable donation” is a world first.  Secure and immutable blockchain technology guarantees that all donations will reach the right beneficiary by making the flow of money transparent to the donor.

Security, Transparency, and Fun

Donating via SmartAid is not only secure, efficient, and transparent – it’s fun! A direct connection to a donor’s credit card or PayPal account allows for an easy process that even lets donors share their donations via Social Media, thus motivating others to share this experience and jointly support the charity project.

“For a long time, we at YOU Foundation have been looking for a way to enable individuals to donate to our charity projects all around the world. Therefore, we can’t wait to see SmartAid in action!”, says Ute-Henriette Ohoven, founder of YOU Foundation.

“Since 2015, we at Datarella have been working on Blockchain projects with our corporate partners, such as Bosch, Siemens, BMW, Merck, and international humanitarian organizations, such as the UN World Food Programme WFP, or UK Aid.  We are very happy to launch SmartAid, together with YOU Foundation, and we are highly curious how donors will perceive the new transparency of their donations”, adds Michael Reuter, CEO of Datarella.

Donate Now!

If you are interested in partnering with SmartAid in a CSR sponsorship relationship, please contact us!

The post SmartAid — Datarella Launches The World’s First Blockchain-Based Donations App appeared first on MICHAEL REUTER.

The magic sauce of RAAY RE lies in the combination of technology / digitization and the understanding and profound expertise in property management, as well as the real estate investment area. The folks at Hammer AG develop and run their own commercial properties, over at Wertgrund Immobilien AG billions of Euros are managed in residential real estate funds.

I was invited by Wertgrund CEO Thomas Meyer to elaborate on our vision of the Digital OS for Real Estate (German). Based on the successful launch of our Connex Coin, the first tokenized investment token in Germany, we are looking forward to launching more tokens in 2020 and see the first installation of our Smart Wallet, enabling users to handle financial transactions based on Blockchain technology. Tokens — or, programmable money — are the basis of several products and services we are offering with RAAY RE. I’m excited to be part of this digital revolution!

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Most people aren’t self-employed, and most people have never asked themselves whether to start something on their own. Why should they? There is no rule that says “self-employment is the holy grail”.  Of course, we know that self-employment can have positive effects on our health, e.g. the likelihood of hospital admissions of self-employed individuals is about half that of wage workers. This finding holds true even when accounting for a potential self-selection of the healthy into self-employment. However, we don’t know whether self-employed — who often simply cannot afford to become ill — are less sensitive towards their (potential) illnesses.

Of my friends and business network, I couldn’t tell whether, in principle, it’s healthier to be paid on a monthly basis or generating sufficient revenues for a withdrawal from the business account. I, myself, have never been employed by somebody else, except as a working student, so I can’t compare. What I do know however, is, that there are some of my friends who aren’t really satisfied with their jobs and like to discuss the start-up and venture capital topic at dinner parties.  They then declare to be ready to quit their jobs as soon as the right time has come. Ok, only when is the right time? Answers like “as soon as I have the right idea”, “after I have reached the next step on my career ladder” — or even better — “when the right point of time has come” are given. Sorry guys, not one of you will start her own company. This is nothing else as prevaricating. 

As so often in life, you typically know when the right time for something has come, be it to move to another city, to leave your partner, to have kids, or to quit your job and start your own company. These significant moves in life usually are triggered by a real need — in my case, it was my father’s role model, who, earning a decent income as a self-employed steel trader, returned home at 5 pm, went on holidays when it made sense or played tennis with us kids when the weather — and not a boss — allowed it. I felt the need to live autonomously and to decide about essential aspects of my life — and my first company, an online travel agency, followed suit.

Of course, you should have some idea you plan to build your company on. And, of course there should be some visibility regarding market potential, product acceptance, and future revenues, before you start-up. It may be wise to gain some experience working for a large enterprise or a consultancy in order to build your network and not being forced to start from 0. However, if you feel being ready for a change, go for it — start your own business — the best time for that is right now! 

There is one alternative I’d like to point out: if you join a company that allows you to act as if you were self-employed, that encourages you to create and pursue your vision of the business, go for that option! With Datarella, we have tried to create such a company — I’d describe our business as a creative venture at the high-end side of technology combined with sufficient business clout guaranteeing that the show goes on. Obviously, joining a company like Datarella could be a valid alternative to start-up!

The post The Best Time To Start With Something New Always Is Now appeared first on MICHAEL REUTER.

What holds true for employees, is true for business partners, too. And this was the reason for me to agree without hesitation to take a more active role in developing the Convergence Alliance, a brainchild of Jamie Burke, Founder, and CEO of Outlier Ventures, a London-based investor in technologies for an open data economy.

I have known Jamie for quite a few years and we have had many encounters in joint projects, workshops, and conferences. In my view, Jamie is one of the best and brightest minds in the tech space, especially in understanding complex matters in distributed systems and the data economy.

Having also loved working with Outlier Ventures CTO, Aron van Ammers, and Lawrence Lundy, OV’s Head of Research, the decision to devote a significant part of my time to support the Convergence stack and become an Advisor with OV was a no-brainer. I am honored and happy to work together with such great minds and I ‘m looking forward to jointly building a sound framework for Web 3!

The Convergence Alliance

In June, Outlier Ventures, Datarella, and 16 other enterprises and organizations launched the Convergence Alliance CA a group of leading enterprise partners, venture capitalists, technologists, start-ups and academic institutions join forces to better leverage blockchain technology to pioneer the next phase of the Web.

Consisting of the three layers Production (IoT), Distribution (Crypto), and Consumption (AI), the Convergence stack addresses the whole Web 3 ecosystem with highly specialized, though integrated, protocols and service providers. With Datarella, we support Outlier Ventures In coordinating and integrating CA’s individual technologies and projects in order to pave the way for the next generation of smart distributed applications.

At its kick-off event Diffusion 2019, 19–20 October in Berlin,  Convergence Alliance members work together with more than 500 developers and 20 protocols on 50m+ lines of open source code. Read more about Diffusion 2019!

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The real estate industry has been booming for more than 10 years and most players within the industry have great balance sheets combined with huge profits. Every boom phase comes to its end, eventually. When early market indicators start to change, forward-looking market participants adapt their strategies and prepare for slowing markets. Blockchain is a foundational technology that’s best suited not only for simplifying businesses, streamlining processes and eliminating inefficiencies, which is most needed in times of softening markets but at the same time, blockchain is a great enabler of new business models that had not been possible to offer before.

We have big plans with RRE, aiming at leveraging blockchain technology to disrupt the real estate industry. We will start with tokenizing illiquid real estate assets.

Leveraging Blockchain Technology To Disrupt The Real Estate Industry

Since we at Datarella and RAAY are no experts in real estate, we are happy to have teamed up with Hammer AG and Wertgrund AG, two premier real estate companies with great track records. For me personally, it’s a real honor that Hans Hammer, CEO of Hammer AG, and Thomas Meyer, CEO of Wertgrund AG, are willing to start this fascinating journey together with us. Both of them not only represent highly successful companies, but they are very entrepreneurial types who think outside the box and have this superb mix of being curious and explorative, as well as reputable and down-to-earth at the same time. It’s an absolute pleasure to work with them.

I’m looking forward to co-building RAAY RE with Datarella, RAAY, Hammer, and Wertgrund — a team that is best suited for making the real estate industry more efficient. If you‘re interested in discussing our plans let‘s meet at ExpoReal in October!

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