The Briefing: Through a Different Lens
For those who prefer their context current for a commercial edge.
Suppose you’re preparing for a trip to Nairobi, Jakarta, or São Paulo. You want a real-time sector briefing focused on fintech or clean energy, a shortlist of local Series A founders to meet, and context on how regulations are shifting, all tailored to your goals.
You won’t get that from a PDF or a static country pack.
Soon, you might not even need to ask an assistant to pull it all together.
Startups like Mindtrip, Navan, and SkyLink are already building AI-native tools that personalise logistics and bookings. At the same time, emerging AI agent platforms are automating outreach, qualification, and multi-step workflows.
What’s missing - albeit coming - is the integration:
Briefing intelligence, verified contact discovery, and seamless meeting orchestration, delivered through one AI-powered interface.
You’ll say:
“Show me three key policy shifts in Indonesia’s packaging sector, flag who’s raising capital, and book a conversation with someone shaping the agenda.”
Your AI assistant pulls signals from local media, cross-references WhatsApp investor circles, verifies a founder through shared contacts, and confirms the meeting.
This is briefing, reimagined: contextual, adaptive, and relational - built for leaders who move across borders and break down barriers.
While no platform fully delivers this yet, startups like Forgemytrip, Clay, and others are closing the gap fast, combining workflow automation with the kind of real-time, ecosystem-based context that turns information into advantage.
The world is shifting. We can leverage these shifts to positively shape what we do and how we show up.
Fully Briefed, Today
Today, before we land in a high-growth country or unfamiliar city, what we know can shape what we notice, who we meet, and the outcomes we unlock. Many leaders default to formal briefings and static country packs. Yet in rapidly-shifting markets, context often moves faster than the briefing notes.
This scenario-led edition of Crossing Borders introduces four briefing styles. Choose your approach - or better yet, design it.
The setting may be international, yet the expanded view applies just as well when preparing any type of market brief, at home or abroad, to deepen international understanding.
How do you get fully briefed?
Option 1: Rely on the Formal Pack
You skim the latest country briefing PDF from HQ. It’s dated three months ago however includes regulatory updates and macroeconomic stats. You trust it’s enough. On the ground, you ask questions already answered in the local media. A partner politely suggests an article that went viral last week.
Upside: Covers foundational risk and political structure.
Downside: You’re briefed, but not current. You miss the signals.
That’s one option. There are others.
Option 2: Let AI Guide You
You ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Claude to summarise recent policy changes, competitor moves, and digital trends in-market. The insights are fast, surface-level, and mostly useful. You land informed on issues that didn’t make your country pack. Despite this, when culture and nuance matter, the conversation goes thin.
Upside: Speed, range, and early signal detection.
Downside: No texture. You’re scanning, not sensing.
Option 3: Mix AI + Local Voices
You use AI to get up to speed, then reach out to three local founders and a journalist via LinkedIn and WhatsApp. You cross-check insights and ask them what’s missing from the headlines. You land with context others don’t have, including a coffee invite from someone who just closed a Series A round.
Upside: Curated insight with relevant connections.
Downside: Requires intention, not just access.
Option 4: Get Briefed by Local Intelligence
You use Boardy, an AI-powered networking and briefing tool, to secure a pre-trip briefing from a vetted local expert. They talk you through how investors are actually behaving, which initiatives are gaining ground, and what’s being discussed in business circles albeit quietly, not yet publicly. Your agenda shifts mid-flight.
Upside: Strategic edge from lived experience.
Downside: You need to trust, and act on, the intel.
Why It Matters
New insight rarely comes from familiar sources.
Mark S. Granovetter’s theory of The Strength of Weak Ties shows that innovation, opportunity, and new information often emerge from loose, peripheral connections; the people just outside your default network, rather than from close contacts. In unfamiliar markets, those weak ties are often the ones who point you toward the real signals, the local shifts, and the overlooked openings.
Moving Further, Faster, Together
A well-structured briefing brings together information, insight, and intent, across three layers:
Signal shows the shift: what’s happening.
Story reveals the context: why it matters, and to whom.
Connection brings you closer: to those who can interpret, amplify, or act on what you learn.
Layered together, they turn a standard update into a more strategic arrival.
Layering briefing tools with human connection, particularly from those embedded in the ecosystem, increases strategic range. Good briefing sets the conditions for sharper observation and more relevant exchange on the ground.
Because when we see more, we move smarter.
What would turn your next market update into a smarter arrival - a signal, a story, or a connection?
Next in Crossing Borders:
The Arrivals Hall.
We tend to notice what we’ve been trained to see. And yet, new opportunities rarely wear name tags. Expanding what we’re primed to spot can sharpen what we act on and where we lead next.
Not Travelling Internationally?
Yet still keen to cross borders and break down barriers in business?
These scenarios are about international travel, however not always with a boarding pass.
Travel to unfamiliar, high-value parts of the world with intent, not habit. That might mean joining a virtual roundtable. Or having a coffee with someone in your home city, albeit who is far outside your usual circle.
What matters isn’t how you go, yet that you go. Curious. Prepared. Ready to engage.
No travel? Start here, with this practical cheat sheet for virtual and local travel that builds real global reach.
Download it here:
Agency Redefined
Leopold Aschenbrenner, formerly with OpenAI, writes in their article Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead, “You can see the future first in San Francisco.”
If that’s true today, will it still be true tomorrow?
Reid Hoffman’s upcoming book, Superagency: What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI Future (digital release on 28 January 20252), explores AI’s transformative potential. Co-authored with Greg Beato, the book paints an optimistic vision of a future shaped by AI, where human ingenuity and advanced technology combine to create extraordinary outcomes. Hoffman’s message is clear: instead of fearing AI, we should harness its potential to personalize education, accelerate medical breakthroughs, and empower individuals to navigate complexity.
Reconnaissance
Heading abroad for business in 2025? One hundred years ago, travelling from London to Sydney or Singapore to New York took weeks. Today, these journeys take less than a day by flight, and online, we can connect instantly with the click of a button.
This unprecedented speed, both physical and virtual, has transformed how business is conducted. Yet the foundational principle of success remains unchanged: preparation is everything.