The work begins when familiar answers are no longer enough. Markets, cost structures, technology, regulation and institutional conditions are changing at the same time. Historical data can point in the wrong direction, and conventional plans can obscure the position that is actually becoming possible.
I help leaders identify where the economics have changed; what assets, relationships, capabilities and trust they can turn into strategic advantage; which constraints are genuinely binding; and what partnerships, permissions and proof are needed before serious commitment.
The same method applies across international growth, market entry, technology-enabled business models and large structural challenges. It uses three calculations: whether an opportunity has crossed the point at which action makes economic sense; whether the chokepoints that once prevented progress still hold; and whether a model can endure beyond the exceptional conditions that made it possible to start.
The aim is not to produce another strategy document. It is to make a better decision: where to invest, expand, partner, test, redesign, defer or stop - and what it will take to hold the position.
Recent Articles:
Updated Calculations to Create and Capture Value
Number 7A, 1948 is an 11-foot-wide canvas made from poured, dripped, and pooled enamel paint. In May this year, it set a new auction record for a work by Jackson Pollock when it sold for US$181.2 million at Christie’s New York.
The Burden of Knowing Better
“We’ve always done it that way.” This is possibly the most dangerous phrase to be spoken in an organisation today.
Golden Age or Depressed Decade? Breaking down the World Bank Global Economic Prospects
It can feel as if the lights are going out across the global economy. Outside big tech and winner-takes-all platforms, that is not the whole picture. New market positions are forming inside the largest, hardest, longest-running problems on earth - and the economics of holding those positions have shifted decisively in the past three years. This article …
Finding the Way: Organisations building market positions where money and mandates failed
For a number of organisations, it is now structurally cheaper to solve problems affecting millions or billions of people than to leave them unsolved. The old aid architecture has exited; they are building the replacement. And yet the most significant gaps remain open – in twelve hard problem domains that, unlike much of the global economy, are still rel…
Do the maths: Is there a market position from solving this hard problem?
Some hard problems remain hard because the cost of solving them is too high to act on. Others remain hard because no one can agree on what leaving them unsolved is costing. Carbon has been the second kind for most of the last two decades, which is why it has largely been treated as a compliance obligation rather than a market position. The argument has …
Latent, Not Lost
Hard power, deployed through money and mandate, is no longer enough to solve the world’s most challenging problems. Health, education, climate, financial inequality, and justice remain the largest underserved market opportunities of our time. Institutional players are retreating. Building a market position in these spaces means drawing on the capital, t…
Beyond a Money or Mandate Starting Point
Leaders who care about solving a hard problem that affects millions or billions of people often start with the same questions:
Who has the money? Who has the mandate? How do we get close to them?
There’s an alternative: Begin with a calculation that tells you whether the economics support you building a commercially viable solution.
The Barrier Keeping You Out May Already Be Gone
Hard problems - the ones affecting millions or billions of people - are becoming market positions.
Most people with the resources and the ambition to build inside one have already done the market analysis. They know the scale. They have a view on the technology. They understand, at least in outline, what a solution would require.
What they often have not yet done is map the chokepoints.
Calculating the Second Curve
Most people working on hard problems, the kind affecting hundreds of millions of people across health, education, financial access, and climate, have calculated the size of the market. The number of people affected, the scale of unmet need, or the Total Addressable Market (TAM) if this were a venture pitch. That calculation is usually large and usually …
Q1 Soft Power Brief: Hard Problems Become Market Positions
Five organisations profiled in depth: Hala Systems, M-KOPA, One Acre Fund, Living Goods, and Tostan.
