The Turnaround Plan Has to Work on Monday
How AI can help teams understand, direct and carry through a recovery
KAINORA FOUNDATIONS™
Foundations Perspectives
Questions worth testing before the investment thesis hardens.
A connected series examines how abundant intelligence changes enterprise value, what institutions should preserve, how capability is built, who must own consequential decisions, and why the middle market remains underserved when tools must become owned enterprise capability.
The series
The Missing Connection Between AI and Business Value
Powerful technology creates possibilities. A connected approach to delivery turns those possibilities into capabilities a business can reliably use.
Read and listen: The Missing Connection Between AI and Business Value
The Work After the Agent Finishes
AI has made producing work cheap. Finishing it, checking it and living with it hasn't gotten cheaper.
The Most Expensive Integrator in the Company
In the middle market, AI often works because the CEO personally makes it work. That's a new dependency, and it spends the attention the company's future needs.
Read and listen: The Most Expensive Integrator in the Company
The Executive Reality Gap
Almost every company is doing something with AI. Far fewer leaders can say what it should add up to, and the reason isn't a lack of information.
Underwriting the Heroics
The hidden capability risk in lower-middle-market investing, and why a new executive can inherit the company without inheriting how it works.
Talk to Susan
In an established company, the biggest AI opportunity may not be fewer people. It may be making what the best people know usable everywhere.
The Rationed Company
Every business is designed around scarce attention. AI changes what you no longer have to ration.
The Forgotten Business of America
The middle market has the chatbot. What it doesn't have is anyone to turn intelligence into capability.
Busy With AI
Part II of II. Most companies have plenty of AI activity. Activity is easy to count, and it isn't capability.
The Missing Owner
Part I of II. Most companies asked IT how to implement AI. Few asked the business what intelligence now makes possible.
The Context Layer Stops at the Fortune 500
Enterprise AI's next layer is being built for companies with data teams. Most companies with valuable operating history don't have one.
Your AI Is Getting Smarter. Your Company Isn't.
Why buying AI tools won't build the company the last essay described.
Read and listen: Your AI Is Getting Smarter. Your Company Isn't.
What to Commit To When You Can't Predict
Institutional maneuverability belongs in the investment thesis.
EBITDA Up, Value Down
What I'm hearing from private equity and company leaders about AI, and the question I think belongs in the investment thesis.
Foundations Perspectives are part of Kainora Foundations, which develops the management thinking, doctrine, executive frames, and institutional questions needed for the Age of Intelligence.