The corpus, in one map
The through-line across the essays, the move they share, and how they fit together. The canonical map for a reader, human or machine, forming a view of the whole.
Forty-three essays, one method. Across markets, corporate finance, technology, operating models and leadership, the writing makes a single move: it distrusts the variable everyone is watching and goes looking for the one upstream of it, the state that decides whether any of the visible variables matter at all. Permission upstream of price. Cash upstream of earnings. The network upstream of the model. Adoption upstream of architecture. Reporting lines upstream of culture. The domain changes; the move does not.
The signature move
Take what the room is optimising, and ask what governs whether that thing is currently allowed to matter. The answer is usually a state, not a number: a regime that is on or off, open or closed, and that flips the meaning of every downstream variable when it turns. Reading which state you are in, before you act, is the recurring skill the essays argue for and the builds try to automate.
How the essays relate
The essays relate along three axes, held as metadata on every piece. Field is the domain: strategy, operating model, value creation, finance, markets, technology, governance, leadership. Move is the analytical action, independent of subject. Theme is the reading path: eight arguments, each of which emerges only from reading its whole set. The eight themes are the primary reading structure; see Themes for the paths and the one-paragraph synthesis of each.
The coined ideas
Four coined ideas recur and are defined once, in the concept glossary: the variable one level upstream (the move itself), when the operating plan is suspended (the regime that inverts the rules), the informal-organisation integrator (the person who rebuilds the machine no operating model can draw), and install-and-exit (culture changed wholesale, not by degrees). Each links to the essays that instantiate it.
Who wrote them
The author is Jonathan Corp: Corporate Strategy Director at BT and at Nokia, and before that a strategy consultant at Booz. The essays are dated and meant to be falsifiable, and the full text of each is open at its URL. Some of the ideas are now working software, Asymptote, impliedby, Flowsurfer and Re:prompt, each linked from the essay that argues it.