AI Make, Buy or Partner
Build, buy, partner or hybrid: an argued sourcing decision for each AI capability you invest in. For the CTO, the chief AI officer, procurement or an operating partner who needs a call the board can sign.
PRICE
€7,500
DELIVERY
3 weeks
REVIEW
Signed by a partner
§ 01 · The problem
"We built what we should have bought. We bought what we should have built."
Engineering wants to build: it is interesting, and it is owned. Procurement wants to buy: it is faster, and it is accountable. Neither bias gets it right consistently — and the wrong call compounds, into years of integration debt or a team-quarter spent rebuilding what an off-the-shelf tool already does.
This Signature applies five lenses to each capability — differentiation, capability and capacity, five-year economics, time-to-value, reversibility — and shows when "build" is strategy and when it is ego. Same for "buy".
§ 02 · What you get
A defensible sourcing decision. For each capability.
Five deliverables built to make the make-vs-buy-vs-partner decision rigorous, traceable, and aligned with your strategic intent.
DELIVERABLE 01
Capability scorecard
Each candidate capability scored on five lenses: strategic differentiation, internal capability and capacity, five-year economics, time-to-value, lock-in and reversibility.
DELIVERABLE 02
Make-buy-partner decision matrix
Each capability mapped to one of four sourcing modes: build, buy, partner, hybrid. Decision rationale documented. The 2×2 your CTO can defend in board.
DELIVERABLE 03
Vendor landscape (for buy/partner)
For each "buy" or "partner" decision, a shortlist of 3-5 vendors with comparative analysis: capabilities, pricing logic, integration model, maturity, lock-in risk. The starting point for procurement, not the finish line.
DELIVERABLE 04
TCO comparison model
5-year TCO comparison for each sourcing option per capability. Build cost vs license fees, integration, ops, switching. The number behind the recommendation, not the gut feel.
DELIVERABLE 05
Sourcing strategy memo
6-8 page memo summarizing decisions across the portfolio. Strategic logic, key trade-offs, sequencing recommendations. The document that goes to Comex or board for sign-off.
§ 03 · Process & timeline
Three weeks. Three sessions. Sourcing decisions you can defend.
From capability scoping to an executive-ready memo, co-designed with your CTO, procurement and business owners so the decisions stick.
WEEK 1
Capability scoping
90-min session: the 3-7 capabilities under review, strategic intent, internal capacity, budget envelope. We frame the decision space before scoring anything.
WEEKS 1–2
Scorecard & vendor scan
Each capability scored on the five lenses. Vendor landscape scanned for every "buy" or "partner" candidate, with three to five vendors shortlisted per capability.
WEEK 2
TCO & decision modeling
5-year TCO comparison per capability per option. Decision matrix populated. First-pass sourcing recommendations drafted. Working document shared async for review.
WEEK 3
Pressure-test session
90-min joint session with CTO, procurement, and business sponsors. Challenge every recommendation. Surface internal disagreements. Calibrate the recommendations against organizational reality.
WEEK 3
Memo & handover
Sourcing strategy memo finalized. 90-min handover with the sponsor: walkthrough of decisions, anticipated objections, sequencing recommendations. You own the case end-to-end.
§ 04 · Frequently asked
Six honest answers to common questions.
How many capabilities can you cover in one engagement?
Three to seven capabilities. Beyond that, AI Portfolio Arbitration is the better fit: it decides across the whole portfolio rather than capability by capability.
Are you independent from AI vendors?
Yes — we don't take referral fees, vendor commissions, or co-marketing arrangements. The vendor landscape we deliver reflects our honest read of the market, not whoever wrote us a check. If we recommend a vendor, it's because we'd recommend it to ourselves.
What if the answer is "build" — do you build it?
No — Odyssey specifies, we don't build. If a "build" decision comes out of this report, the natural next step is a bespoke specification of the agent or Skill, handed to the integrator of your choice. We stay independent of build economics.
How do you handle hybrid recommendations?
Many capabilities sit between pure build and pure buy: buy the model layer, build the orchestration; partner for the platform, own the data. We document hybrid recommendations explicitly with the boundary between owned and outsourced components — and where future re-evaluation makes sense.
How fresh is your vendor landscape knowledge?
We track AI vendors continuously — Anthropic, OpenAI, Cohere, Mistral on foundation models; Vertex, Bedrock, Azure AI on platforms; LangChain, LlamaIndex, Haystack on orchestration; verticals like Glean, Sana, Hebbia. The market shifts every quarter and we shift with it. We tell you what we don't yet know with the same honesty as what we do.
When should we use this rather than AI Portfolio Arbitration?
They are sequential. Portfolio Arbitration decides which initiatives to pursue; this Signature decides, for each one you pursue, whether to build, buy or partner. Each works on its own.
§ Ready when you are
Decide before engineering capacity gets committed.
€7,500, three weeks, signed by a partner. The sourcing decision that ends the build-versus-buy debate — and the wrong calls it produces.