Scaling Digital Capital
The Architect's Blueprint for AI-Augmented Organizations
Enterprise AI spending surged 6x in one year. Yet 95% of AI projects "fail" ROI. Here's the uncomfortable truth: ROI is the wrong metric.
By Chris Tansey — Author of Managing Digital Capital
The Problem with AI Today
When you measure AI like a software purchase, you'll always be disappointed. AI isn't a tool you buy. It's capital you architect.
What Most Organizations Do
- • Buy AI tools and hope for ROI
- • Run pilots that never scale
- • Manage tools that don't connect
- • Build capabilities without integration
What This Book Teaches
- • Architect AI as infrastructure
- • Measure ROE, not just ROI
- • Design synthetic workers with specs
- • Build coordinated, governable systems
The 4-Step Framework
No hype. No doom. Just blueprints for building your AI-augmented organization.
Build the Foundation
Shift from ROI to ROE
Stop measuring AI like software purchases. Learn to measure Return on Efficiency—the metric that actually captures AI value.
Design the Synthetic Workforce
Treat AI as coworkers, not chatbots
Meet the Synthetic Developer and Synthetic Researcher—AI workers that write code and analyze data with the right management.
Wire the Infrastructure
Connect your data substrate
Build the nervous system that coordinates your AI workers. Data pipelines, workflow orchestration, and the synthetic org chart.
Install the Operating System
Structure governance with kill switches
Deploy pods of humans and AI with proper governance. Economics of intelligence, trust-based frameworks, and emergency controls.
The Complete Blueprint
How the four parts of the book connect
What You'll Be Able to Do
Concrete capabilities you'll gain from the book
Inside the Book
10 chapters following the logic of construction
Part One: The Foundation
- •The Graduation of AI
- •The Digital Balance Sheet
Part Two: The Workers
- •The Synthetic Developer
- •The Synthetic Researcher
Part Three: The Infrastructure
- •The Data Substrate
- •The Nervous System
- •The Synthetic Org Chart
Part Four: The Operating System
- •Economics of Intelligence
- •Governance 2.0
- •The Architect's Playbook
Who This Book Is For
Leaders Scaling AI
You've moved past "should we use AI?" and are wrestling with "how do we scale it safely?"
System Thinkers
You understand that structure matters more than any single component. You think in architecture.
Governance-Minded
You want AI that's controllable and trustworthy, not just fast. You need kill switches.
Still debating whether AI is real? Start with Book 1: Managing Digital Capital — the foundation for this blueprint.
Chris Tansey
Author & AI Architect
Chris is the author of Managing Digital Capital and Scaling Digital Capital. He helps organizations architect AI systems that actually work—moving beyond chatbots to coordinated synthetic workforces with proper governance.
Learn More About ChrisReady to Architect Your AI Organization?
The blueprint is in your hands. The job site is ready. Let's build.
Available in Kindle and paperback formats