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Build TBD / Complex operations. Useful next steps.

A clear way forward for complex work.

You have an operation to improve, an AI idea to evaluate, or a promising initiative that needs an owner. Let’s make the work understandable—and decide what is worth doing next.

Talk through a challenge Find your starting point

Business assessment · Practical implementation · Fractional leadership · Team learning

01 / Work with Build TBD

Different situations.
A deliberate beginning.

There is no required ladder of services. Start with the kind of uncertainty or ownership your organization needs help with. Define the problem, choose a useful next step, and establish how you will know it worked.

Suggested starting point

Start with Discovery

4–6 weeks · $22,000–$40,000

A timebound, comprehensive assessment of business processes and physical operations, with a defined operating model and prioritized transformation roadmap.

  • A shared picture of transactional workflows and physical or engineering operations
  • Prioritized opportunities and a proposed operating model
  • A transformation roadmap and executive decision brief

Your leadership decides what to fund. Duration, scope, milestones and fee are fixed in the proposal; implementation is scoped separately.

Explore Discovery

Suggested starting point

Opportunity & decision sprint

Work through a limited investment or workflow question before committing to implementation.

  • A bounded question and the evidence it needs
  • Options, constraints and unresolved assumptions
  • A practical recommendation and next decision

A focused scope, distinct from the comprehensive Discovery assessment. Fee and timing are agreed in the proposal; production changes and software rights are separate.

Explore a decision sprint

Discuss an opportunity sprint

Suggested starting point

Build and test a useful capability

Turn a priority workflow into a defined project, with clear acceptance criteria and a handover your team can use.

  • A defined problem and accountable owner
  • Human and agent roles with review boundaries
  • Evidence for a continue, revise or stop decision

Scope, fee and timing are agreed for the workflow. A limited decision sprint can help clarify the first step.

Explore implementation

Suggested starting point

Lead the work over time

Choose the initiatives worth funding, align delivery across teams and build internal capability with a fractional Innovation and AI Executive.

  • Priorities and investment choices
  • Accountable owners and a review cadence
  • A team capability plan

Decision rights, capacity and monthly executive retainer scope are agreed with your executive sponsor.

Explore fractional leadership

Suggested starting point

Practical team learning

Practice with relevant work, check sources and build outputs that a colleague can review.

  • Learning built around relevant work
  • Clear responsibilities and review practices
  • Opportunities to apply and reflect

Audience, format and scope are agreed together. This is not a promise of certification.

Explore team learning

Explore our services, including practical AI and innovation training.

02 / Inspect the approach

The same problem.
A clearer way to work.

Follow one supplier purchase-request example. Each step makes a missing piece explicit. The decision remains with the people responsible for the operation.

Illustrative work products—not client evidence or a live software demonstration.

Supplier purchase request / working recordIllustrative

First, establish the boundary

What is actually holding the request?

Business question
Could clearer cost codes and supplier information reduce returned purchase requests?
Within scope
One purchase-request type. Budget-holder approval and policy exceptions remain with designated people.
Still unknown
Whether incomplete intake, record assembly or reviewer capacity causes the delay. Missing fields are a hypothesis to test.
Before choosing a tool

Observe the work and validate the bottleneck with the people doing it.

Supplier purchase request / working recordIllustrative

Then, make alternatives visible

Automation is one option.

Process change
Require the cost code and supplier status before the request reaches approval.
Draft assistance
Assemble a draft from permitted supplier and purchase records; a named person checks it. This may add review effort.
Learn first
Collect missing baseline evidence before committing to a trial.
What would change the choice?

If returns mostly reflect missing fields, improve intake first. If assembling records remains the bottleneck, evaluate drafting assistance.

Supplier purchase request / working recordIllustrative

Give the choice an owner

Test the simpler intervention first.

Authorized work
Illustrative decision: trial the intake checklist. Revisit AI drafting only if record assembly remains a source of rework.
Accountable roles
The sponsor authorizes the trial. The budget holder retains purchase approval; policy exceptions go to the designated reviewer.
Acceptance basis
Agree how to review request completeness, returns and reviewer effort, plus conditions for revising or stopping the trial.
The boundary matters

Missing information or an exception returns to a person. It is not an invitation to guess.

Supplier purchase request / working recordIllustrative

Carry the learning forward

A useful result includes a decision.

Review together
Request completeness, returns, reviewer effort and exceptions. Compare with the agreed baseline; no result is assumed here.
Possible decisions
Continue within scope, revise the design, gather more evidence, or stop.
Keep the reasoning
Record the basis, accountable owner, next action and condition for another review.
Stopping can be the right answer

A trial that rules out a poor investment can still leave the organization better informed.

The important question is not only “Can it do the task?” It is “Can this operation responsibly use the result?”

Business judgment, through delivery

Give the work an executive owner.

Cory Nation works with executive teams to identify worthwhile opportunities, shape a focused portfolio, and connect business priorities with delivery.

His background spans systems engineering, enterprise transformation, venture building, and practical capability development.

Meet Cory

A clear mandate. A practical cadence.

Fractional leadership gives a defined innovation and AI portfolio sustained executive attention. Agree the priorities, accountable owners, expected work products, and decision rights with an executive sponsor.

An opportunity map, investment choices, delivery reviews, and a team capability plan give the work a structure your organization can carry forward.

Discuss fractional leadership

03 / Methods & systems

A connected approach to human and agent work.

Different tools address different missing pieces. These are complementary roles in an operating approach, not an already integrated customer suite. Choose what the work needs; an engagement does not require buying every system.

Agent Centered Design

Who does what, with which context and authority—and what happens when the handoff fails?

Design shared work

Method and developing practice

Decision Thread

Why did we choose this option, who owns the decision, and what would make us revisit it?

Inspect the decision

Method and durable records

Parallax

How does scoped work become assigned execution, returned evidence and a reviewable result?

Coordinate the work

Scoped evaluation and licensing

GeoFiber

Which permitted context is relevant to this question, and what is worth investigating next?

Explore context fit

Research and capability evaluation

Innovation Lab connects the approach to practical implementation, team learning and sustained leadership.

Explore how the systems fit together, including GeoFiber and its evaluation pathway. A service engagement can stand on its own.

04 / Build TBD Innovation Labs / AI Research

Fund a question worth answering.

Our research connects context, decisions, human-agent work, and agentic operating systems. Support a defined investigation, findings that can be examined, and a clearer basis for the next decision.

Recognition can acknowledge the contribution. The substance is the work it enables.

Explore research sponsorship

Explore the research practice. For individuals and smaller teams, explore proposed supporter options. For organizational use, discuss licensing.

Illustrative research brief / proposed

What makes an agent handoff reviewable?

Question
Which context, authority and acceptance information helps a reviewer assess a returned work item?
Study to scope
Compare defined handoff designs in an agreed workflow. Record exceptions and reviewer observations.
Possible deliverables
Protocol, findings, limitations and a practical design brief—agreed in the proposal.
Terms to agree
Milestones, access, data handling, publication and IP rights. Funding does not predetermine the findings.

Extend your practice

Bring the methods into your work.

Bring ACD into your practice

Building AI solutions for other organizations? We are developing an ACD partner pathway for consultancies and agent-development firms. Discuss a supported pilot, ongoing delivery rights, and the capabilities your clients retain after the engagement.

Training, client-delivery authorization, and continued corporate use are scoped separately.

Discuss a partner pilot

Explore the partner pathway

Bring useful knowledge into your agent tools

ACD Knowledge Access would provide curated, attributable references through MCP. Separately scoped Parallax Operations Access would connect supported tools to an operating environment with defined permissions.

Both pathways are in development. Customer access begins with qualification and a pilot discussion; availability, data boundaries, usage, and support are agreed for each pilot.

Explore knowledge and operations access

From priority to proposal

Make the next step concrete.

  1. Describe the priority. Share the decision, workflow, or business opportunity you want to improve.
  2. Review fit. Identify the outcome, constraints, people involved, and decisions to make.
  3. Agree the scope. Set the work products, owners, acceptance criteria, timing, and commercial terms in a proposal.

Tell us what needs to work better.

Bring the knotty problem. You do not need a finished brief.

Talk through a challenge