ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
An AI-native strategy firmGlobal Advisors: a consulting leader in defining quantified strategy, decreasing uncertainty, improving decisions, achieving measureable results.
A Different Kind of Partner in an AI World
AI-native strategy
consulting
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We are hiring experienced top-tier strategy consultants
Quantified Strategy
Decreased uncertainty, improved decisions
Global Advisors is a leader in defining quantified strategies, decreasing uncertainty, improving decisions and achieving measureable results.
We specialise in providing highly-analytical data-driven recommendations in the face of significant uncertainty.
We utilise advanced predictive analytics to build robust strategies and enable our clients to make calculated decisions.
We support implementation of adaptive capability and capacity.
Our latest
Thoughts
Global Advisors’ Thoughts: Leading a deliberate life
By Marc Wilson
Marc is a partner at Global Advisors and based in Johannesburg, South Africa
Download this article at https://globaladvisors.biz/blog/2018/06/26/leading-a-deliberate-life/.
Picket fences. Family of four. Management position.
Mid-life crisis. Meaning. Purpose.
Someone once said that, “At 18, I had all the answers. At 35, I realised I didn’t know the question.”
Serendipity has a lot going for it. Many people might sail through life taking what comes and enjoying the moment. Others might be open to chance and have nothing go right for them.
Some people might strive to achieve, realise rare successes and be bitterly unhappy. Others might be driven and enjoy incredible success and fulfilment.
Perhaps the majority of us become beholden to the momentum of our lives.
We might study, start a career, marry, buy a dream house, have children, send them to a top school. Those steps make up components of many of our dreams. They are steps that may define each subsequent choice. As I discussed this with a friend recently, he remarked that few of these steps had been subject of deliberations in his life – increasingly these steps were the outcome of momentum. Each will shape every step he takes for the rest of his life. He would not have things any other way, but if he knew what he knows now, he might have been more deliberate about choice and consequence…..
Read more at https://globaladvisors.biz/blog/2018/06/26/leading-a-deliberate-life/
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Strategy Tools
Strategy tools: Effective transfer pricing
So much has been written about transfer pricing. Yet it remains a bone of contention in almost every organisation. Transfer pricing is not merely a rational challenge – it often raises the emotions of internal service users and providers who argue regarding scope, quality, price and value.
We have found that effective transfer pricing relies on some fairly simple best practices and critical success factors.
Many organisations recover costs as a regular ‘below-the-line’ deduction from operating division income statements. In our experience, charge out is almost always preferable. This results in internal value judgements and negotiation regarding delivery happening closer to time of use.
We have typically seen that the realisation that internal pricing plays this role and the consequences of poor implementation are not well understood.
Results of poor transfer pricing implementation
Sub-optimal economic use decisions
Where costs / prices are higher than they should be, buyers pass this on as an inflated cost to their customers, experience margin squeeze, or utilise less of the service than they might have.
Strategically this can lead to incorrect decisions regarding the provision of services to the market and loss of market share.
Where costs / prices are lower than they should be, this can lead to overuse of a product or service and poor cost recovery from external customers.
Strategically this can result in the over promotion and sales of products and services that are achieving lower margins than thought, or that might even be making losses.
Sub-optimal investment and resourcing decisions
Incorrect pricing can lead to over- or under-investment in capacity and product or service quality. Further, the resourcing decisions will be incorrect should the price signal to the supplier be incorrect.
Political and emotional argument
Where buyers are unable to obtain assurance that an internal price is correct, there is typically resentment regarding the cost of the internal product and service and the sheltered position employees of the internal service provider occupy – in the buyer’s eyes free from commercial pressures.
Buyers and suppliers typically also argue regarding the quality of the service or product relative to the price paid.
Suppliers may react to criticism claiming their product or service is strategic in nature and refute its availability in the external markets.
Poor product / service quality
Poor price signals will result in lack of comparable product and service quality benchmarks. This can result in ‘gold-plating’ or poor-quality product and service provision.
Read more at https://globaladvisors.biz/2021/01/06/strategy-tools-effective-transfer-pricing/
Fast Facts
Fast Fact: The rate of technology adoption exploded in the 1990s
The 1990s were an inflection point in the adoption of new technologies. While radio showed fast adoption in the 1920s, new technologies introduced post 2010 had reached penetrations of more than 30% of the United States population within 3 years from launch. PCs...
Selected News
Quote: Nate B. Jones – On “Second Brains”
“For the first time in human history, we have access to systems that do not just passively store information, but actively work against that information we give it while we sleep and do other things-systems that can classify, route, summarize, surface, or nudge.” – Nate B. Jones – On “Second Brains”
Context of the Quote
This striking observation comes from Nate B. Jones in his video Why 2026 Is the Year to Build a Second Brain (And Why You NEED One), where he argues that human brains were never designed for storage but for thinking.1 Jones highlights the cognitive tax of forcing memory onto our minds, which leads to forgotten details in relationships and missed opportunities.1 Traditional systems demand effort at inopportune moments-like tagging notes during a meeting or drive-forcing users to handle classification, routing, and organisation in real time.1
Jones contrasts this with AI-powered second brains: frictionless systems where capturing a thought takes seconds, after which AI classifiers and routers automatically sort it into buckets like people, projects, ideas, or tasks-without user intervention.1 These systems include bouncers to filter junk, ensuring trust and preventing the ‘junk drawer’ effect that kills most note-taking apps.1 The result is an ‘AI loop’ that works tirelessly, extracting details, writing summaries, and maintaining a clean memory layer even when the user sleeps or focuses elsewhere.1
Who is Nate B. Jones?
Nate B. Jones is a prominent voice in AI strategy and productivity, running the YouTube channel AI News & Strategy Daily with over 122,000 subscribers.1 He produces content on leveraging AI for career enhancement, building no-code apps, and creating personal knowledge systems.4,5 Jones shares practical guides, such as his Bridge the Implementation Gap: Build Your AI Second Brain, which outlines step-by-step setups using tools like Notion, Obsidian, and Mem.3
His work targets knowledge workers and teams, addressing pitfalls like perfectionism and tool overload.3 In another video, How I Built a Second Brain with AI (The 4 Meta-Skills), he demonstrates offloading cognitive load through AI-driven reflection, identity debugging, and frameworks that enable clearer thinking and execution.2 Jones exemplifies rapid AI application, such as building a professional-looking travel app in ChatGPT in 25 minutes without code.4 His philosophy: AI second brains create compounding assets that reduce information chaos, boost decision-making, and free humans for deep work.3
Backstory of ‘Second Brains’
The concept of a second brain builds on decades of personal knowledge management (PKM). It gained traction with Tiago Forte, whose 2022 book Building a Second Brain popularised the CODE framework: Capture, Organise, Distil, Express. Forte’s system emphasises turning notes into actionable insights, but relies heavily on user-driven organisation-prone to failure due to taxonomy decisions at capture time.1
Pre-AI tools like Evernote and Roam Research introduced linking and search, yet still demanded active sorting.3 Jones evolves this into AI-native systems, where machine learning handles the heavy lifting: classifiers decide buckets, summarisers extract essence, and nudges surface relevance.1,3 This aligns with 2026’s projected AI maturity, making frictionless capture (under 5 seconds) viable and consistent.1
Leading Theorists in AI-Augmented Cognition
- Tiago Forte: Pioneer of modern second brains. His PARA method (Projects, Areas, Resources, Archives) structures knowledge for action. Forte stresses ‘progressive summarisation’ to distil notes, influencing AI adaptations like Jones’s sorters and extractors.3
- Andy Matuschak: Creator of ‘evergreen notes’ in tools like Roam. Advocates spaced repetition and networked thought, arguing brains excel at pattern-matching, not rote storage-echoed in Jones’s anti-junk-drawer bouncers.1
- Nick Milo: Obsidian evangelist, promotes ‘linking your thinking’ via bi-directional links. His work prefigures AI surfacing of connections across notes.3
- David Allen: GTD (Getting Things Done) founder. Introduced capture to zero cognitive load, but manual. AI second brains automate his ‘next actions’ routing.1
- Herbert Simon: Nobel economist on bounded rationality. Coined ‘satisficing’-his ideas underpin why AI classifiers beat human taxonomy, freeing mental bandwidth.1
These theorists converge on offloading storage to amplify thinking. Jones synthesises their insights with AI, creating systems that not only store but work-classifying, nudging, and evolving autonomously.1,2,3
References
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TpON5T-Sw4
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0k6IznDODPA
3. https://www.natebjones.com/prompts-and-guides/products/second-brain
4. https://natesnewsletter.substack.com/p/i-built-a-10k-looking-ai-app-in-chatgpt
5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhyxDdHuM0A
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