New essay — Lean Back to Leap Forward: the catapult logic of AI strategy →

Framework / Full argument

Viscosity is the fuel

Reading time ≈ 22 minutes (estimate, pending final word count) · Last revised July 2026 · Also available as PDF and audio

1 · Where intelligence comes from

Placeholder — final prose arrives as markdown from the content owner. Core content for this section: the founding observation; the Mesopotamia-to-Renaissance thought experiment; viscosity defined.
NextMining and social ablation →

2 · Mining and social ablation

Placeholder — final prose arrives as markdown from the content owner. Core content for this section: Klarna; Orgvue regret data; the mining spiral; surveillance Taylorism and the Meta case.

From the Ledger

700→0

Klarna replaced roughly 700 agents with a chatbot, then began rehiring as satisfaction eroded.

Fintech · 2024–25

From the Ledger

8,000

Staff laid off at Meta the same week the Model Capability Initiative's keystroke capture drew a staff petition.

Big Tech · 2026

NextThe Social Edge Paradox →

3 · The Social Edge Paradox

Placeholder — final prose arrives as markdown from the content owner. Core content for this section: the industry's bind; model collapse and knowledge collapse; the 8.7% verification figure.

From the Ledger

8.7%

of AI users bother to verify what the model produces.

Anthropic AI Fluency research, 2025

Model collapse

Models trained on model output degenerate as the distribution narrows — rare knowledge and dissenting formulations vanish first.

Figure SE-6 · Mining vs cultivation

Two loops: mining, where AI use hollows out human interaction, and cultivation, where AI use deepens it.
Fig. SE-6 — Two loops. The verbs decide everything: consume or cultivate.
NextA catapult, not a conveyor belt →

4 · A catapult, not a conveyor belt

Placeholder — final prose arrives as markdown from the content owner. Core content for this section: loading and launch; Pixar, Salesforce, Granola as loading mechanisms; Figure SE-1.

Cultivated example

Pixar's Braintrust stores social potential energy through structured, candid feedback. The films are the projectiles.

Figure SE-1 · Social Edge Catapult

Performance dips while an organisation loads friction, apprenticeship, and trust, then launches higher than a straight line once that resistance is released.
Fig. SE-1 — Load before launch: the physics behind the framework.
NextNine archetypes →

5 · Nine archetypes

Placeholder — final prose arrives as markdown from the content owner. Core content for this section: the Matrix walked through; migration path and neglect drift; Figure SE-2.

Figure SE-2 · Social Edge Matrix

A nine-cell matrix of load against launch, naming archetypes from Sleepwalker to Catapult, with a migration path and a neglect drift traced across it.
Fig. SE-2 — Locate your organisation, then decide which direction to move.
NextFive instruments →

6 · Five instruments

Placeholder — final prose arrives as markdown from the content owner. Core content for this section: one paragraph per instrument linking to the Instruments page; Figures SE-3 to SE-5.

Figure SE-3 · Kill Zone / Relational Fortress Map

Automate the projectile, never the arm: a map separating tasks safe to automate from trust-dependent work worth protecting.
Fig. SE-3 — One row per value-chain activity in the worksheet version.

Figure SE-4 · Four Ds of Enriched Work

Delegation, description, discernment, and diligence form a cycle of assess, train, measure, repeat for individual AI capability.
Fig. SE-4 — Basis of the individual-level diagnostic.

Figure SE-5 · Convex and Concave Leadership

As AI capability rises, convex leadership converts abundance into structural ambition while concave leadership lets it dissipate into polished busywork.
Fig. SE-5 — Small differences in leadership produce non-linear differences in outcome.
NextSocieties and the commons →

7 · Societies and the commons

Placeholder — final prose arrives as markdown from the content owner. Core content for this section: civilisational acceleration; cross-thinkers; the cognitive commons; the two country charts.
Two author charts referenced in the dossier's asset manifest — national participation in the cognitive commons, and HDI against open-source software output — are not yet in the asset folder. Request the source JPGs from the content owner before this section ships.
NextThe manifesto →

8 · The manifesto

Placeholder — final prose arrives as markdown from the content owner. Core content for this section: the central proposition and a link into /manifesto.
NextRead the Manifesto →