The Issues

The Issues.

The standing edition. Each one takes a single argument apart and builds it to use. Newest first. The first fourteen were written and released together as the Foundational Collection, the canon this publication stands on; new Issues join from there.

  • The Scope Ladder · July 19, 2026

    An Afternoon, or a Restructure

    The word transformation hides five different sizes of change, from a habit you can build before lunch to a company you have to take apart and rebuild. Naming the size is most of the work.

  • Clinical Operations · July 17, 2026

    When Your Science Is Outsourced

    Most AI-in-biotech advice pictures a discovery lab. If you run a clinical-stage company, your bench is at the CROs, and your real surface area is writing, reviewing, submitting, and oversight, under rules written to protect patients.

  • The Role · July 16, 2026

    You Already Employ Your AI Product Partner

    Every small-company leader hits the same wall. The role sounds essential and sounds like a hire they cannot make. It is not a headcount. It is a function, and the person with the right shape is already in the building.

  • Execution · July 15, 2026

    You Don't Need a Roadmap. You Need a Quarter.

    The request that kills more AI transformations than any budget line is the responsible-sounding one, bring me the roadmap. You do not need a two-year plan. You need one quarter you can run.

  • Measurement · July 13, 2026

    You Can't Fix What You Won't Grade

    Most leaders run their AI transformation on anecdote and vibes. The fix is a one-page scorecard, and the hard part is not the scoring. It is being honest about the pillar that flatters you.

  • Buy/Build · July 12, 2026

    There Are Only Five Moves

    Every AI request feels unique. It is not. There are only five things you can do with any of them, and most of the discipline is routing each to the right one on purpose.

  • Governance · July 11, 2026

    Audit Yourself in Public

    The strongest test of a system is whether its author will use it, in the open, with the gaps left in. So I ran this publication against its own rules.

  • The Role · July 10, 2026

    Arguing About the Wrong Thing

    The meeting is about which model and which vendor. Those choices matter less than the room thinks. The scarce resource was never the technology.

  • The Operating System · July 8, 2026

    The One-Lever Mistake

    A company gets serious about AI and reaches for one lever. A year later the lever moved and the company did not. It takes three pillars, and they grow together or not at all.

  • Strategy · July 7, 2026

    Your Edge Was Never the Model

    Whichever model leads this quarter, you rent. The thing worth owning sits underneath it, the capacity to turn whatever arrives into how your company works.

  • Writing With AI · July 6, 2026

    Excellent and Generic

    You can think hard, land a real argument, and still produce prose that sounds like a machine made it. Polish is one thing. Whether the writing could only have come from you is another.

  • Thinking With AI · July 5, 2026

    Don't Automate the Struggle

    The fear that AI will atrophy how we think is real, but only if you use it to replace the struggle. Update your mental model instead, and the same tool makes you think harder, not just write faster.

  • Buy/Build · July 3, 2026

    Stop Swinging for the Fences

    In the AI era the build-versus-buy line leans toward build, and the temptation is to only build big. But adoption is the game, and the smallest builds are how you win it.

  • Governance · July 2, 2026

    There Is No AI Work Product

    The first thing every leader asks is what their AI policy should be. The whole answer fits in one sentence, and it moves accountability to exactly one place.

  • The Founding Argument · July 1, 2026

    The Biotech of Tomorrow

    You cannot build the biotech of tomorrow by making the biotech of yesterday slightly more efficient. The founding argument of Translational Intelligence.