Understanding the systems behind the headlines
Most of the world’s important problems don’t belong to a single industry.
Electricity prices are shaped by grids, weather, markets and infrastructure.
AI depends not just on software, but on chips, data centres, power, water and capital.
Electric vehicles change transportation, as well as batteries, charging infrastructure, electricity demand and supply chains.
Agriculture connects land, water, commodities, logistics, technology and climate.
These are systems.
This website is an attempt to understand them. How technology, infrastructure, markets, capital, policy and the environment interact, and how a change in one part of a system creates constraints, opportunities or unintended consequences somewhere else.
The focus is beyond what is happening, and going deeper into questions such as:
- What is the underlying system?
- Where are the bottlenecks?
- Who captures the value?
- What incentives shape behaviour?
- What changes when technology enters the system?
- And what happens when one constraint moves somewhere else?
What we explore
The subjects vary, but the lens remains consistent.
Energy & Power
Electricity markets, grids, renewables, BESS, VPPs, flexibility, trading and the infrastructure required to electrify economies.
Mobility
EVs, charging, fleets, transportation economics and the systems that determine how people and goods move.
Digital & Industrial Infrastructure
AI infrastructure, data centres, semiconductors, manufacturing and the physical systems underneath technological progress.
Food, Agriculture & Supply Chains
Commodities, farming, water, processing, logistics and the infrastructure connecting producers to consumers.
Cities & Infrastructure
Water, transport, waste, land, ports and the increasingly complex infrastructure required to support growing cities.
Climate & Environment
Climate risk, ecosystems, resource constraints and the environmental consequences embedded within economic and infrastructure decisions.
These aren’t isolated categories. They increasingly overlap.
A data centre is an AI story but also a power, water, land and capital story.
An EV is a mobility product but also a battery, mineral, electricity and infrastructure story.
A wetland is an ecological asset but also part of a city’s flood protection, land economics and development system.
Why systems?
I have spent much of my career working at the intersection of technology, product, design and business. That naturally led me to look beyond individual products and companies and towards the systems in which they operate. The deeper I go, the more I find that the interesting question is rarely “Is this technology good?”
It is, “What happens when this technology enters a real-world system?“
Because adoption depends on infrastructure.
Infrastructure depends on capital.
Capital responds to incentives.
Incentives are shaped by markets and policy.
And ultimately, every physical system operates within environmental constraints.
That is where I find the most interesting problems.
This is a work in progress
This isn’t intended to be a definitive encyclopedia of these systems.
It is a place to study them in public and to map unfamiliar industries, understand how their pieces fit together, question assumptions, and gradually build a deeper understanding of the infrastructure shaping the economy.
Some pieces begin with a company.
Others begin with a technology, a market, a city, a policy decision or even a seemingly small observation.
The goal is the same:
Go beneath the headline. Understand the system. Find the constraint. Follow the value.
Technology changes systems.
Constraints determine how far they can go.