Why Smart Companies Fail at AI. How to Escape the Factory Logic Trap and Build an AIFirst Organization - See Yew Lim PhD

Most AI initiatives don't fail because the technology is weak.
They fail because organisations keep thinking like factories.

Companies invest heavily in AI tools, platforms, and automation - yet pilots stall, adoption fades, and promised value never materialises. The tools work. The organisation does not.

In Why Smart Companies Fail at AI, AI strategist Lim See Yew explains why escaping this pattern requires more than better technology. It requires leaders to confront what he calls the Factory Logic Trap - an inherited way of organising work that treats roles as fixed, thinking as centralised, and intelligence as something that flows downward through hierarchy.

This book shows how that logic quietly undermines AI initiatives - and what leaders must change to build organisations that genuinely work with intelligent systems.

Drawing on real enterprise experience and institutional research, the book explains:

• Why many AI projects fail before they begin
• The organisational gaps that derail AI transformations
• How to redesign work so humans and AI complement each other
• What leaders must change before buying the next AI tool

Why Smart Companies Fail at AI is not a technical manual.
It is a leadership guide for building an organisation capable of thinking - and deciding - effectively in the age of AI.