Toolkit
The Dynamic Markets Model
Five stages describing how a market’s structure changes as a technology diffuses. Answers what kind of market something is going to be, rather than how large it will get. Checked stage by stage against the fixed internet, cloud infrastructure, and the smartphone industry.
The Trilemma Test
A step scenario planning usually skips: checking whether a system’s own stated objectives are compatible before building scenarios around them. Bounds the space by constraint, establishing what a plan cannot have rather than what it might get.
The Depth Test
Four questions, run in order, on any sovereignty claim: which layer it reaches, how deep that layer is, whether both jurisdiction and institutional freedom are held, and whether the position is a weapon or a guarantee of a seat. Most claims fail, and telling apart the failures that matter is most of the value.
The Opaque Surprise Test
Separates the third kind of surprise from the other two. Asks whether what is missing from a picture is genuinely unknowable, or merely unexamined, since only one of those answers leaves anything to do.
The Acquisition Test
Four questions run before a deal reaches a term sheet, on public data. Where does the target’s layer — not the target — sit on its own diffusion curve; does the valuation assume the layer’s future or its past; what does the seller know about that layer; and, for early buyers, is the infrastructure beneath it actually in place.