Insights
Ideas we are working through in public.
Writing on enterprise venture architecture, AI governance, operational intelligence, and the systems that decide whether a company can be trusted with its own data.
Featured thesis
AI should never be trusted more than the evidence on which it depends.
Michael's work in enterprise AI begins with a distinction most organizations overlook: data records; evidence proves.
As artificial intelligence assumes a greater role in operational and strategic decisions, enterprises will need more than abundant data and increasingly capable models. They will need provenance, reconciliation, governance, deterministic controls, reproducibility, chain of custody, accountability — evidence.
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Michael is the creator of the Certified Intelligence framework and the author of The Certified Enterprise, which explores how organizations can establish trust before AI begins making consequential decisions.
The commercial expression of that work is FohBoh.ai, which applies deterministic governance and certification to operational data in the restaurant industry — certifying metrics before they reach a system of record, a dashboard, or a model.
Themes
The recurring arguments.
Data vs. Evidence
Why an abundance of data has not produced an abundance of certainty, and what closes the gap.
Governance Before Intelligence
Why controls designed after deployment are the most expensive controls an enterprise ever builds.
Architecture Before Acceleration
AI can accelerate execution. It cannot compensate for an incoherent thesis or weak economics.
Why Systems of Record Cannot Certify Truth
The entity that generates a metric cannot also be the authority that certifies it.
Designing Ventures in the Age of AI
What changes when research, design, and build compress — and what stubbornly does not.
Operational Intelligence
What operators actually need from technology, from someone who has run the operation.
Michael speaks about transformative technologies affecting the global restaurant industry — restaurant automation, voice technology, and the changing nature of customer engagement through integrated data, prescriptive and embedded analytics, and modern data management systems.
Most recently, alongside the release of The Certified Enterprise, he speaks on enterprise data integrity — and on the danger of believing that a probabilistic system like an LLM will deliver the trusted insight required to make consequential business decisions.
Named one of the restaurant industry’s most influential restaurant technology experts by Nation’s Restaurant News.
Read the list ↗- AI Needs Evidence, Not More Data
- The Certified Enterprise
- Governance Before Intelligence
- Architecture Before Acceleration
- Designing Ventures in the Age of AI
- Why Systems of Record Cannot Certify Truth
- Trust as Enterprise Infrastructure
For business opportunities, speaking, or venture architecture, contact Michael through this website or at michael@bailiwickventures.com.