How to Build an AI Center of Excellence Without Hiring an Army
An AI Center of Excellence doesn't require a 50-person team and a multi-year transformation programme. Here's the lean model we've seen work at mid-market enterprises that need AI capability without Big Tech headcount.
Norvik Research & Practice Team
The traditional AI Center of Excellence model — 30+ data scientists, a dedicated infrastructure team, a platform team, and a governance function — is appropriate for organisations running dozens of AI systems in production. For most mid-market enterprises building their first or second AI capability, it's over-engineered and under-delivered.
The Lean CoE Model
The minimum viable AI CoE needs five things: executive sponsorship (one named sponsor with budget authority), a small internal team (three to five people with complementary skills), a curated set of use cases to start with (three is ideal), a clear governance framework, and an external partner relationship to fill expertise gaps.
What the Internal Team Actually Does
The CoE's job is not to build everything — it's to enable the business to consume AI responsibly. That means setting standards for how AI systems are evaluated and approved, running the governance process for new use cases, managing relationships with external vendors and technology providers, and building internal literacy across the organisation.
The most effective CoEs we've helped build spend 40% of their time on governance, 30% on internal education, and only 30% on direct delivery.
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Our team works with enterprise clients to implement the approaches covered in our insights. Let's talk about your context.
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