Returns – Performance & ROI

How you measure success from AI investment and adoption depends on which goals you are working toward: your Balanced Thrive Strategies, or the goals that run the business.

Operational effectiveness and run-the-business work are better measured by Return on Improved Performance (ROIP; Jesuthasan and Boudreau, Reinventing Jobs) and by budgetary compliance: is the work affordable? Many early AI adopters learned that unguided AI deployment led to high adoption and runaway AI spend, with little of the business value they expected.

Accounting under GAAP leaves a gap, the GAAP gap, in seeing how much AI is costing your business in total. That raises the question: how do you know whether AI is paying off in profit and cash flow?

The January 2027 release will provide examples and guidelines you can use to test your own AI investment, spend and returns.