With big-tech AI investment dominating headlines, the question remains on whether the AI boom is sustainable in 2026 or is it just another tech bubble waiting to burst?
Roman Stanek, founder and CEO of Business Intelligence (BI) analytics platform GoodData, believes that teams who can adapt to the changes in rhythm and speed of work that AI enables will be the ones to succeed this year.
NDA’s editor Michael Feeley spoke to Stanek to find out more…
Tell me about GoodData, starting with why you founded it? What opportunity did you see?
Back then, the industry was built on static systems and slow release cycles, even as businesses were accelerating. It was clear that analytics needed the same elasticity and reach the cloud was giving to other parts of the tech stack. Traditional BI was tied to on-premise systems and couldn’t keep up with the speed businesses needed. We started GoodData to break that model, to move analytics to the cloud, and open the door to a new generation of data products. That decision made us early pioneers and leaders, and it set the foundation for everything we’re doing now in the AI era.
How has the company evolved since then? What have been your biggest successes to date?
GoodData has evolved from a cloud BI pioneer into an AI-native analytics platform. Over the past few years, we have restructured and optimised our architecture to support analytics-as-code, reasoning, and composability. Our biggest successes aren’t individual milestones: they’re the choices that positioned us ahead of the industry’s shift toward AI-native. We recognised early that traditional BI was reaching its limits and that the future would belong to systems that combine shared semantics, governance, and real-time reasoning to bolster enterprise AI strategies.
Today, that vision is playing out across the industry: the old BI story of dashboards and abundance is ending, and the AI era, defined by scarcity of true intelligence and the need for systems that think, explain, and adapt, is becoming the new foundation for enterprise decision-making.
It feels as if there is a stampede towards AI without many people being clear on what they want to achieve? Is that a fair assessment?
Yes. Most companies are running toward AI without understanding the destination. They mistake experimentation for strategy. The real challenge isn’t adopting AI – it’s aligning AI with business context, governance, and outcomes. Without shared semantics and a clear understanding of how the business actually operates, AI becomes just another disconnected tool. The organisations that win will be the ones that establish clear definitions, shared semantics, and strong governance first, because AI can only reason effectively when it understands the business it serves.
You are quoted as saying: “The US is moving at the speed of innovation. China is copying at scale. Europe is regulating. It’s a suicidal mindset to think you can legislate your way to relevance.” Can you expand on what you mean by that?
The US pushes boundaries because it operates at a velocity that forces innovation. It moves fast, takes risks, and accepts that speed is a strategic advantage, not a liability. China industrialises innovation at scale, turning proven ideas into national capability. Europe, meanwhile, tries to control the pace through regulation. China industrialises them; Europe tries to control them.
Regulation has a role, but when it becomes the strategy, you’ve already lost. You can’t regulate your way into technological leadership. Innovation requires momentum, risk tolerance, and a willingness to move before the path is fully mapped. And right now, the speed gap is widening. The AI race is like the Moon race: you either launch or you watch. Europe needs a mindset shift from protection to acceleration if it wants to stay relevant.
What is your key advice to the digital marketing industry heading into 2026?
The biggest shift for digital marketing in 2026 is that AI changes the rhythm and speed of work. Campaigns, content, and experimentation no longer move in weekly cycles. They adjust in real time. AI shortens the gap between insight and action, and that acceleration is now the competitive edge. My advice is to build teams and processes that can operate at this new tempo. AI doesn’t remove the need for strategy; it makes strategic clarity essential. Marketers who define their audiences, outcomes, and success criteria with precision and can respond quickly will outpace those still operating on slower cycles. In 2026, velocity will separate the leaders from the followers.
