Heatwaves and Strategy
It’s hot here. For anyone reading outside the UK, the country broke its June temperature record yesterday, and today may go higher again....
Reflections
How AI Affects Publishing Depends on Existing Incentives
New Australian research frames AI training on creative work as a market failure. But economic analysis needs segmentation: AI may cause underproduction in literary publishing while driving overproduction in academic sectors where volume is rewarded.
Prompter's Intent
Why GPT-5.5's prompting advice echoes 19th-century military doctrine: the shift from scripting tasks to creating conditions for delegated work to succeed.
ECPA Conference Reflections
Reflections from the ECPA Leadership Summit on AI's impact on publishing. Bob Hutchins' proxy failure framework - how AI undermines trust in writing as a signal of thought and effort - connects to George Akerlof's market for lemons: when quality signals break down, adverse selection can collapse markets. The strategic question for publishers is whether they can credibly signal editorial judgement in ways that are costly for low-quality producers to fake.
Gen X AI
Three patterns from a week of conversations about how people are actually using AI: capability levelling up, a Gen X sweet spot, and a fundamental shift in the viability of solo and small firms.
IPG Spring Conference 2026
Sixteen observations from the IPG Spring Conference 2026: on leisure time, platform risk, AI in workflows, procedural debt, and what it means to think generationally in a structural market shift.
Reflections on 2025
Placeholder
Brooklyn Bridge Parkrun
I’m in New York with the family. We were up early for Brooklyn Bridge Parkrun—a very enjoyable, fast, flat course along the waterfront—fo...
New Office
(Originally posted on LinkedIn): I’m coming up on four years of working as an independent consultant, and I’ve hit the limit on working f...
Setbacks
On weathering professional setbacks and the importance of keeping sight of the overall direction of travel, rather than fixating on short-term reversals.