Brendan Hughes
Brendan Hughes is Founder and Chief Commercial Architect at Liffey. He has spent 20+ years in commercial roles across companies from scale-ups to PLCs, lining up the systems, the processes and the people behind a strategy.
Why Brendan Founded Liffey
In 20+ years of commercial work, from scale-ups to PLCs, Brendan saw the same disconnect every time. The strategy is agreed, written down, and excellent on paper. Then the team hits the coalface, the market moves, and it is out of date almost immediately.
Keeping a strategy current takes somebody maintaining it every week, and a commercial team is busy running the business. He built Liffey so the strategy is kept current from the evidence, with a senior architect deciding what that evidence is worth.
Brendan works directly with companies across Europe on the commercial architecture itself: who they serve, what they sell on, how they price, and the operating rhythm that executes it.
Commercial Strategy and Where Value Leaks
Each piece argues one position on a commercial question.
The Commercial Problem Beneath Confident Garbage
- AI is helping everyone go faster. We've been working with our own AI engine on 37 leaks that were costing us trust, credibility and people's willingness to engage with us.
AI Made Us All Better Writers. It Is Making Us All the Same Writer.
- LinkedIn has shipped a button for reporting AI slop, and it is the right call. It is also aimed at the cheap half of the problem. The expensive half is what ungrounded AI is doing to your voice, and to the decisions nobody ever publishes.
Your Customers Are About to Ask You to Prove It.
- Software spend is being audited the way headcount always was. The companies that hold price will be the ones that can say what changes because they exist, and show the number. The same pressure is arriving on the vendor side as a reckoning over AI returns.
AI ROI Is Forcing a Commercial Reckoning
- The boardroom question about AI has changed. It used to be where can we apply it. Now it is where is the return, and who is accountable for it. That second question is a commercial one, and it is the one most operating models cannot answer.
AI Deals Stall Because Nobody Owns the Outcome
- AI deals rarely stall because the technology fell short. They stall because the commercial exchange is unclear. The moment the system does the work, the buyer stops purchasing a tool and starts purchasing a result.
The GenAI Divide Is an Operating-Model Problem
- Enterprise AI adoption is high and enterprise AI return is not. The research puts the gap somewhere close to universal, and the dividing line has almost nothing to do with the models.
Your Team Is Using AI. The Business Isn’t.
- Access to AI stopped being an advantage the moment everybody had it. What separates the companies seeing a return is where they put it: into commercial decisions, or into individual tabs.
See Where Your Commercial Strategy Can Win More, in 20 Minutes
Where the strategy is thin, what a commercial brain would keep current for you, and whether Liffey fits.