Build, Buy, or Partner

Lesson preview

This isn't a philosophical debate — MIT has a base rate. External partnerships with specialized vendors reached full deployment roughly 67% of the time. Internal builds reached it roughly 33% of the time. That's a 2:1 gap, and it goes unpriced in most 'we have engineers' conversations. The case to build anyway exists, but it's narrow: the workflow is your proprietary competitive edge (not table stakes), no vendor exists at the required depth, the data legally cannot leave your infrastructure, and a named internal owner is budgeted — not assumed — for year two. Everything else is a pride build. The headline figure — vendor partnerships reaching deployment roughly 67% of the time versus internal builds at roughly 33% — understates the real gap, because it only measures reaching deployment at all. It says nothing about the maintenance burden after deployment, where the "year-2 orphan" pattern (a build that launched fine but has no budgeted owner) quietly erodes value that never shows up in the initial success/failure count. The practical implication for a consultant: when you recommend "build," you're not just claiming the team can ship it — you're implicitly claiming someone will still own it in eighteen months. If you can't name that person in the proposal, you're recommending against the evidence, whether or not you say so explicitly.

Key terms in this module

Build vs buy (AI)

Build vs buy is the decision whether to create an AI tool in-house or pay for an existing product or specialist vendor. Buying is usually faster and safer; building makes sense mainly when the workflow is a real competitive edge that no vendor covers.

Frequently asked questions

Who is "Build, Buy, or Partner" for?

This Expert module in AI Strategy & Implementation is for operators, founders and growth teams who run AI in real work and want production-grade judgement. It takes about 7 minutes and ends with a 3-question quiz.

Do I need to code?

No. This module is about decisions, economics and implementation planning, so no coding is involved.

What comes before and after this module?

Before "Build, Buy, or Partner", take "Opportunity Selection: Which Workflows, Which Shape" (module 3 of AI Strategy & Implementation). Afterwards, continue with "The Adoption Playbook".

Related modules

• Previous
  Opportunity Selection: Which Workflows, Which Shape

  Two axes, one bias to correct, and a shape ladder — replacing 'AI brainstorming' with an actual method.

• Next
  The Adoption Playbook

  OpenAI × Anthropic — the frontier labs' interlocking evidence.

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  Iansiti & Lakhani's frame, translated to your clients' scale.