Tijdo Koster

I started in automation before most people had a strong opinion about it — back when automating a workflow meant convincing three departments to agree on a shared spreadsheet format and calling that progress. The tools have changed considerably since then. The underlying challenge — getting an organisation to actually change how it works — has not.

Over roughly 100 projects across my career, I have seen businesses automate invoice processing, onboarding workflows, reporting pipelines, and about a dozen other categories of work that used to require someone to do the same thing 40 times a week. I have also watched enough of these go wrong to have a clear picture of why they fail — and it is almost never a technology problem.

Why the AI transition

The AI transition is different from every previous automation wave, and I say that as someone who has sat through quite a few of them. Previous waves automated specific, narrow tasks — a machine that does one thing, very fast. This wave is different because the tools are general-purpose in a way that nothing before them has been.

That has two implications I find genuinely interesting. First: the opportunity is available to individuals in a way it has never been before. A person who learns to use these tools properly — not as a novelty but as an actual part of how they work — gains a capability advantage that is meaningful and, at the moment, not widely distributed. That gap will close. But it has not closed yet.

Second: the businesses that move fast here will have a structural cost and speed advantage within 24 months. Not an edge. A structural advantage. The ones that are waiting to see what happens are not standing still. They are falling behind, just slowly enough that it does not feel like falling.

What I write about

This site is where I write about AI tools, automation, and what the transition actually looks like from inside an organisation — not from a press release or a conference panel. Practical takes on what works, what does not, and what a sensible response looks like for both businesses and the individuals who work in them.

I am not trying to be the most comprehensive source on any of this. There are plenty of those, and they all have newsletter sign-up forms. What I am trying to be is clear-headed about it — which means calling out hype when I see it and giving credit when something genuinely works.