You don't need an AI strategy to start. You need one messy process and a week.
Nina Brenes··6 min read
- Costa Rica has the highest professional AI-skills penetration in Latin America, more than double the second country (CEPAL, 2025). Talent is not the problem.
- Do not start with a tool. Start with one recurring process that has friction.
- The first month is small on purpose: pick the process, define good, run it with a human checking, decide if it stays.
- Governance is not bureaucracy. It is what lets you sleep. Do not put sensitive client data into random free tools.
To start using AI in your company in Costa Rica, you do not need a strategy, a committee, or a full overhaul. You need one recurring process that already annoys you, and one week to run it with AI while a human checks the output. That is the whole first step. Everything you see on LinkedIn telling you to plan the transformation first is why you never start. You are thinking about it backwards.
Costa Rica already has the talent. The system is missing.
Start with the good part: Costa Rica has the highest professional AI-skills penetration in Latin America, more than double the second-ranked country (CEPAL, 2025). Talent is not the bottleneck. The bottleneck is that this talent works inside processes nobody designed for AI.
Start with a process, not a tool
The most common mistake is starting with the tool: “let's try this ChatGPT, this agent, this platform.” Do it the other way around. Pick a process your team runs often and dreads: the weekly report, the quote responses, the meeting summaries. One. The one with the most friction.
- How often do you do it? The more often, the better the candidate.
- Can you describe what “done well” looks like? If yes, AI can learn it.
- What breaks if it is wrong? If a client finds out first, it stays human-checked.
What the first month looks like
In practice: week one you pick the process and write down what “good enough” means. Week two you run it through AI and compare. Week three you adjust. Week four you decide whether it is worth making permanent, with someone who owns whether it works. That, small as it is, is already an AI operation.
One Costa Rican warning
Do not drop sensitive client data into random free tools. Governance is not bureaucracy, it is what lets you sleep. In the CRAFT methodology we build it in from day one, not after the first scare.
FAQ
How can a small business in Costa Rica start using AI?
By picking one recurring, high-friction process and running it through AI for a month with a human checking the output, before thinking about any company-wide strategy. Start small and provable.
How much does it cost to implement AI in a small Costa Rican company?
Less than the strategy decks suggest. A first process can run on tools you likely already pay for. The real cost is the time to define what good looks like and to keep a human in the loop. A scoped engagement gets quoted after a free first conversation, not before.
What does a company need to implement AI?
Not a big budget or a data-science team. It needs one clear process, a written definition of good, a person who owns the result, and basic governance over what data is used. The tools are the easy part.
Where should a company start with AI?
With the single process that costs your team the most time and patience, not with the flashiest tool. One process, one month, one owner.
Nina Brenes
AI partner for purpose-led, human-first founders
Certified AI Operator (The AI Exchange) and Anthropic Claude Partner. Nina spends her own time in AI conferences and daily practice so the founders she works with don't have to.
Certified AI Operator · Anthropic Claude Partner
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