PhD Notes contain conceptual reflections from my doctoral research, intended to be accessible to stakeholders and shared publicly as part of engaged scholarship. The posts explore theoretical patterns only; all examples are synthetic and non-attributable.
Beyond Control: Designing Conditions for New Forms of Value Creation
Control breaks down when value emerges through interaction rather than execution.
This essay explores why strategy and architecture are still not enough—and what it means to design the conditions in which new forms of value creation can emerge and endure.
From Projects to Systems: Designing for Learning at Scale
Why lasting change depends on architecture, not initiatives
Most strategies fail not because they are wrong, but because the agreements that govern everyday decisions remain invisible.
This blog explores why redesigning value delivery begins with making those agreements explicit.
Why Good Strategies Fail: The Invisible Problem of Agreements
What organizations overlook when they talk about purpose, alignment, and culture.
The Research Spine: Agreements as Economic Infrastructure
Applied economics often models outcomes while missing the invisible infrastructure that produces them: the enacted agreement layer shaping how coordination, value flows, and risk actually travel through SME ecosystems. This post defines that missing layer as the agreement field, shows how fragility appears as agreement debt (shadow work, rework loops, risk pushed downward), and explains the PhD impact of: making “culture” measurable through agreement footprints (observable residues) and an integrity metric (E³: Everyone, Everywhere, Every Day) within the CAESI approach—so regions can detect risk earlier and build comparable, practice-close evidence across sectors. Situated in the emerging field of agreement research, the PhD explicitly builds on and extends Jim Ritchie-Dunham’s conceptualization of the Agreements Field by translating it into an evidence-oriented research spine for SME ecosystems.