The conversation around AI in business has shifted. It is no longer about whether to adopt it. It is about whether companies are adopting it with any real strategic clarity — or simply moving fast in the wrong direction.
Kimmo Hakonen is the Head of Innovation at Espressio AI, an AI agent platform built for marketing teams that need to operate at scale without expanding headcount. He brings a practitioner’s perspective to a role that is being redefined in real time across the industry. We sat down with him to discuss what innovation actually looks like when the tools evolve faster than any roadmap, where most companies go wrong, and what his first 90 days in the role are focused on.
You are stepping into the role of Head of Innovation at an AI systems company. What does innovation even mean when the tools are evolving faster than any roadmap?
Innovation is not about the tools. It is about the thinking and strategy of the person holding them. AI can build anything at speed, which means the bottleneck has shifted from “can we build it” to “should we build it.” My job is not to chase every new model release. It is to be the Brain that directs the Muscle. As I write in Evolve or Expire — muscle without a nervous system just accelerates you toward a cliff.
Taste and moats keep coming up in this space. Where does a Head of Innovation sit in that conversation — is innovation about finding the moat or building the taste?
AI killed “busy” as a badge of honor. The innovation leader’s job is not to manage tasks anymore. It is to orchestrate outcomes. Think of it as being the architect of the skyscraper while AI lays the bricks. Without that creative judgment — knowing which skyscraper to build and why — all the capability in the world just produces Fast Idiocy at scale.
The Head of Innovation does not just sit in that conversation. They own it. They are the person who turns reclaimed time into strategic moves instead of more noise.
Most companies say they are innovative. Few actually are. What is the organizational difference between the two?
Scaffolding versus tombstones. Genuinely innovative companies have AI embedded in their operations — in the standard operating procedures, in the workflows, governed and connected to real business outcomes. The rest have a ChatGPT license and use it randomly.
That is what I call the Pilot Trap. Shiny tools, zero infrastructure. The companies that succeed build scaffolding: a coherent strategy they implement, monitor, and continuously update. The ones that fail keep running disconnected pilots and wonder why nothing compounds.
When AI can prototype and build at speed, the bottleneck shifts. Where is the real constraint now — ideas, execution, or something else entirely?
It is not ideas. It is not execution. It is clean thinking.
I call it the Clarify stage. If a human cannot explain the problem clearly in three minutes, AI will hallucinate the gaps in three seconds. Most teams skip straight to building and then wonder why everything feels fast but hollow. The constraint is the quality of the question, not the speed of the answer. You bring the brain. AI brings the muscle. That division of labor only works when the thinking on the human side is genuinely sharp.
This is precisely the philosophy behind how Espressio AI builds its agent systems — every deployment starts with a structured discovery process to ensure the strategic thinking is solid before any automation is introduced.
What is the call you are most focused on getting right in the first 90 days at Espressio?
Finding the broken pipes.
Every company has a Time Robbery running — silent, expensive, and invisible until someone maps it. My first move is the audit: where are talented people spending time on work that a well-configured agent could handle? That is where the real leverage is hiding.
You fix the broken pipes first. Then you build. It is not glamorous work. But it is where the compounding begins.
Kimmo Hakonen is Head of Innovation at Espressio AI. Espressio AI builds AI agent systems for marketing and growth teams, helping companies move faster without growing headcount. Teams looking to identify where automation can create the most immediate impact can book a discovery workshop at espressio.ai.
