Insights
Featured Articles
Build vs. Buy Isn’t the Only Choice
Originally published on LinkedIn, June 15, 2026
One of the classic project management decisions is build versus buy. Do you develop a capability internally, or outsource it to someone else? The answer often comes down to the same tradeoffs: cost, time, and quality. Now there is a third option.
Information is the Root of Morale
June 6, 2026
Morale is emotional, but the conditions that create morale are often informational. This article explores how non-credible milestones, swirl, undefined success, broken feedback loops, and constant reprioritization erode confidence – and why information is often the true root of morale.
Why Retrofitting Fermentation Infrastructure Is Harder Than It Looks
May 30, 2026
Industrial biotech has repeatedly explored repurposing existing fermentation infrastructure rather than rebuilding capacity from scratch. But adapting facilities designed for one process to another is often far more complicated than early models assume. This piece explores the economic, operational, and manufacturing realities that make scaling biology one of industrial biotech’s hardest problems.
Featured Series
Alternative Proteins and Foods
Just ok, isn’t ok.
Nearly every company in this sector has rebranded at least once over the last several years. That’s not a coincidence. But rebranding doesn’t suddenly make a dry, chewy burger juicy and delicious.
This series explores the challenges facing the alternative food industry and highlights some of the interesting winners.
Selection, Screens, and Hidden Assumptions
How the questions we ask determine the answers we find.
Many scientific tools are designed to reveal truth. But every screen, assay, and selection process carries assumptions about what matters and what success looks like.
This series explores how experimental design shapes discovery – and why the biology we uncover is often a reflection of the questions we choose to ask.
Organizations rarely fail all at once. More often, they drift gradually – through misalignment, hidden constraints, delayed feedback, and decisions that make sense locally but compound system-wide over time.
Navigation & Drift explores leadership, execution, and strategy in complex adaptive systems through the language of seamanship, command, and navigation.