Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 3/5

Massa: Enterprise AI transformation must be top-down, not bottom-up hackathons

Ale Massa · Kavak's Playbook for Rebuilding a Company Around AI · Aug 9, 2026 · at 25:45

Ale Massa, Chief Product & AI Officer at Kavak, advises corporate leaders on how to execute enterprise-wide AI transformation effectively.

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“The first is it has to be top down because of this. Like, if you just get adoption, it won't go anywhere because it's hard to generate this taste or strategy for people to bottom up, decide what to build and whatnot, and come up with something that works for the company. So the transformation has to be top down and leaders need to adopt and leaders have to have a very clear, Plan on what to build. I've seen so many companies. It's just like, oh, like we're doing a hackathon. People are coming up with use cases. We're sponsoring some of these use cases. That doesn't work. It's like, be very clear on what the company will look like in three or five years. And then start building that and be like very vertical in guiding your troops towards that.”

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