This insight summarises The Space In Between: Why the Biggest Cost of Enterprise Transformation Isn't the Work. It's the Handoffs., by Wei Manfredi, Senior Vice President of AI and Architecture at IHG Hotels & Resorts and an AIHA advisor, published on Substack on 2 November 2026.
AI labs move into implementation. In July, Ode launched in the US with backing from Anthropic, Blackstone and Hellman & Friedman. In October, the Financial Times reported plans for a similar venture in Europe with Hg, placing AI engineers directly inside companies. Most coverage reads this as a threat to consulting. Manfredi sees a bigger story about how enterprises get things done.
The cost lives between teams. For decades, transformation has been split three ways: technology companies build the tools, consultants work out how to use them and internal technology teams implement them. Every handoff (strategy, architecture, engineering, deployment, change management) costs time, loses context and invites another steering committee. Enterprises spend billions making individual teams more productive while leaving the friction between them largely untouched.
Agentic AI changes the economics. A small team of business experts and engineers can now identify a problem, build something, put it in front of users and improve it based on what happens, work that once needed several specialized teams.
Build an internal FDE capability. If Anthropic sees the need to embed engineers inside enterprises, Manfredi asks, shouldn't enterprises build their own forward-deployed engineers? Not another central team collecting requirements and managing a backlog, but small groups of engineers and architects working directly with business power users. Solutions that work get replicated; ones that don't become lessons. External FDEs still bring outside expertise, but they should not be the only people who know how to improve the systems.
Organize around problems. Technology teams have long been organized around systems, projects and delivery. The goal is not to replace consultants but to remove the handoffs that made them necessary: "Bring partners in. Build internal FDEs. Keep the learning loop at home." The real test is whether the organization gets better at solving its own problems after the outside engineers leave.
Related AIHA insight: Is OpenAI's Dots Making ERP and SaaS Obsolete?