Start with the Room - Why the cheapest useful first move in AI adoption is a shared understanding and a shortlist, not a proof of concept

The organisations that struggle with AI are rarely the ones that chose badly between technologies. They are the ones that started building before anyone in the room could describe, in plain language, what the work actually is. This paper sets out why that happens, what the evidence says about it, and why a structured day or two spent on understanding and selection is the highest-return money in the whole adoption sequence.