From Build vs Buy to Create & Adapt!
For years, technology decisions came down to a familiar debate: Do we build it… or do we buy it? That framework is breaking down. Why?
Because with Gen AI, organizations are increasingly asking a third question: “Why do either… when we can create it on demand?”
We’re seeing a quiet but powerful shift:
- The need for “sidecar” applications is shrinking
- One-off tools are being replaced by AI-powered workflows
- “Best-in-breed” is yielding to “good-enough + flexible + fast”
- Business users—not just IT—are becoming builders
Instead of buying another niche solution, teams are:
- Spinning up agents to handle vendor research
- Using chat to generate structured outputs (reports, scopes, analyses)
- Orchestrating workflows across systems without traditional development
And increasingly, they’re going further. With AI-assisted coding tools—Cursor, GitHub Copilot, and their successors—organizations are building lightweight internal applications that would have previously required a procurement cycle, a vendor relationship, and a six-figure contract.
A small team can now ship a working tool in days. Not months.
This is changing the economics of software. Why buy a point solution with 80% of the features you need and 40% you’ll never use—when you can create exactly what you need, tailored to your systems, your data, your workflow?
The result? A move from static software… to dynamic capability.
But let’s be clear—this isn’t a free-for-all.
Organizations need to know what not to build, put governance around what gets created, design reusable patterns instead of one-off hacks, and blend AI with core systems rather than replacing them blindly.
The future isn’t “DIY everything.” It’s “design once, adapt endlessly.”
And that changes the role of IT, procurement, and strategy itself.
