The archive
Research essays
Evergreen work, not news commentary. Each essay is written to stand alone, to strengthen a framework, and to extend the research agenda. Roughly one every three to four weeks.
All essays
RSSPartnership has become one of the most overused words in business. Companies announce strategic partnerships, recruit partners, and measure partner-sourced pipeline — usually before answering a prior question: why should another organization commit scarce resources to us at all?
For decades, organizations have described themselves as data-driven. Yet the most consequential business decisions have rarely been driven by structured data alone. They depend on conversations, judgment, competitive dynamics, customer sentiment, organizational behavior, and countless other forms of qualitative knowledge that resist traditional quantitative analysis.