Buy or build? The decision you can't afford to get wrong
May 28, 2026
Innovation doesn't fail because the technology isn't ready. It fails when the organization isn't. In this episode of In Other Words, host Jason Hemingway sits down with Elaine Barsoom, former Nike AI innovation lead and Venture Partner at Silicon Foundry, to examine the decisions that define how global brands scale technology, manage partnerships and embed AI into everyday operations. From build vs buy to ecosystem fragmentation to AI adoption, Elaine draws on twenty years inside some of the world's most recognized consumer brands to share what most leadership teams only learn the hard way.
Innovation doesn't fail because the technology isn't ready. It fails when the organization isn't. In this episode of In Other Words, host Jason Hemingway sits down with Elaine Barsoom, former Nike AI innovation lead and Venture Partner at Silicon Foundry. Together they examine the decisions that define how global brands scale technology, manage partnerships and embed AI into everyday operations. From build vs buy to ecosystem fragmentation to AI adoption, Elaine draws on twenty years inside some of the world's most recognized consumer brands to share what most leadership teams only learn the hard way.
Drawing on her time building Nike's first AI Center of Excellence and earlier ventures at American Express and Airbnb, Elaine explains why the build vs buy decision is fundamentally an ownership question rather than a technology one. When you build, you own every decision the software touches. The governance, the compliance, the workflows that grow around it, and the people maintaining it years later without the context of why it was built that way.
Most leadership teams plan for what they're building. Almost none plan for what maintaining it will cost them. The conversation also covers why organizations struggle to adopt AI even when everything is in place, how to tell the difference between a deployment that is running and one that is actually working, and why when ecosystems fragment inside a global brand, the root cause is never the technology.
What You’ll Learn:
- Why organizations struggle to adopt AI even when the technology is ready
- What the build vs buy decision really costs over time
- How global brands balance consistency with local market freedom
- Why fragmentation always starts with leadership
- Why human judgment is the one thing you cannot automate
Elaine Barsoom is the former Global Head of Tech Innovation Partnerships and Strategy at Nike, where she built and scaled the company's first AI Center of Excellence across product, retail, marketing and HR. She now works as a Venture Partner at Silicon Foundry, advising enterprises and startups on partnership-led growth across organizations including BP, Deutsche Telekom and Estée Lauder.
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Highlights and YouTube Chapters:
- 00:00 Introduction
- 04:08 The Technology Was Never the Hard Part
- 06:45 A $2B Playbook That Didn't Translate
- 10:09 Partnerships Fail When They’re Treated Like Transactions
- 11:54 Can Your Team Navigate the Ecosystem Without a Map?
- 15:28 Customers Experience the Moment
- 17:18 AI Feels Simple Until It Meets Your Infrastructure
- 19:31 When You Build, You Own Everything It Touches
- 23:34 What Leaders Are Really Buying When They Buy a Platform
- 25:31 The Highest Price Isn't the Money. It's the Years.
- 27:34 Value Shows Up in Behavior, Not Dashboards
- 28:07 The Real Human-AI Question
- 30:37 Think in WAVES, Not Launches
Episode Resources:
- Elaine Barsoom, AI Transformation Advisor, Former Nike AI Leader
- Silicon Foundry Website
- Jason Hemingway, CMO at Phrase
- Phrase Website