Category: Trends & Strategy

Big-picture finance perspectives, M&A readiness, and emerging trends.

  • The Hardest Part of Build versus Buy

    I started thinking about the old build versus buy debate. At first, it seems obvious. AI changes everything. Software can be written faster than ever. Surely the advantage shifts toward building. Then I thought about the real cost of building. Not the programmers. Not the budget. The risk. We often say changing a core operating…

  • “The AI Frenzy Is Back and Lifting the Entire Stock Market to Record Highs.”

    The Wall Street Journal, April 2026. The AI frenzy is upon us. The market is at record highs. What’s it like on the frontier? Chaotic. We’re running 100 miles per hour. Everyone trying to prove the most efficient use case. The biggest gain. The fastest edge. The sky feels like the limit. But those at…

  • The ‘AI Detector’ as Defamation Machine

    (James Taranto WSJ 3 Apr 2026) AI is going mainstream fast—doing exactly what it’s designed to do. And already we’ve got pieces like an WSJ op-ed calling AI detectors a defamation machine. So what’s actually happening? Is AI destroying writers’ careers? Or are the people using it doing the damage? The battle is on. If…

  • “Logical Incrementalism”

    Do you ever reflect back on business school lessons — however hazily recalled, perhaps even misattributing the author — and think: now I get it? I had one of those moments recently. I remembered a phrase from many years ago that I’ve quoted more than once over the course of my career: logical incrementalism. For…