There's a new role quietly appearing across businesses: the AI champion. It's rarely a formal hire. It's usually someone already in the company (a generalist, a special projects person, someone who's enthusiastic and open-minded) who gets handed the AI brief on top of everything else they're doing.

It's a crucial role. Arguably one of the most important in any business right now. And for the individual, it's an incredible opportunity to become the person who actually figured this out.

But the support is basically zero.

There's no playbook. No established methodology. No 'project management 101' equivalent for AI transformation. If you're a project manager, you've got university courses, certifications, Jira, Asana, decades of best practice to draw on. If you're an AI champion, you've got… a ChatGPT login and a lot of Googling.

What strikes me most is how isolated these people are. Every AI champion I've spoken to is working it out alone, inside their own company, reinventing the wheel. They're not learning from each other. They're not sharing what's working. There's no community or infrastructure connecting the person figuring it out at a £10m consumer brand with the person doing the same thing at a £50m one.

That feels like a massive missed opportunity, for the individuals and for the businesses betting on them.

I don't have the answer yet. But I've been thinking a lot about what support for AI champions could actually look like, and I think it starts with getting these people in the same room.