How to Read This Project
A guide to navigating a structured body of work on buy-and-build, integration, and leadership under constraint
The Industrialist is not a newsletter in the traditional sense.
It is a structured body of work about how companies are actually built — particularly in buy-and-build environments where strategy, execution, and leadership capacity collide over time.
Because the writing is organized as a system rather than a feed, readers do not need to start at the beginning or read everything in order. This page explains how the project is structured and how different readers might approach it.
What This Project Is (and Is Not)
This project sits between two bodies of writing that rarely speak to each other clearly:
Academic research on strategy, M&A, and organizational learning
Practitioner commentary focused on deals, playbooks, and outcomes
The Industrialist is not:
Deal commentary
A playbook or checklist
A collection of hot takes
It is an attempt to make visible the underlying logic that governs whether buy-and-build strategies compound value — or quietly erode under strain.
The Structure at a Glance
The work is organized into six sections. Each section examines buy-and-build from a different altitude, but they are designed to work together as a single system.
You can read across sections or go deep into one, depending on what you’re trying to understand.
Buy & Build Strategy
What kind of system are we building?
This section treats buy-and-build not as a growth tactic, but as a system under load. It focuses on sequencing, integration capacity, and why platforms with similar deal strategies diverge over time.
If you want to understand why buy-and-build behaves differently from one-off M&A, start here.
Target Selection & Diligence
What complexity are we choosing to introduce next?
This section reframes target selection as a design decision under constraint, not a screening exercise. It distinguishes between target identification and target selection, and examines how early choices shape integration difficulty long before deals close.
If you are involved in sourcing, evaluating, or approving acquisitions, this section is foundational.
Integration & Execution
What happens when plans meet operating reality?
This section examines the period after close: how execution strain emerges, how systems collide, and why integration outcomes often feel over-determined. The focus is not on tactics, but on how organizations absorb (or fail to absorb) cumulative change.
If you are responsible for making integrations actually work, start here.
Leadership & Operating
Why leadership effectiveness is governed by systems, not personalities
This section treats leadership as a finite organizational resource. It examines decision rights, operating cadence, and leadership capacity under sustained complexity — particularly in buy-and-build environments where escalation and overload are common.
If you lead, advise, or sit on boards of growing platforms, this section provides a useful lens.
Thesis Notebook
What the academic literature explains — and where it still falls short
This section documents the research spine beneath the project. It draws on strategy, M&A, and organizational learning literature, translated for practitioners without oversimplification.
You do not need to read this section to follow the rest of the work. It exists for readers who want to understand the theoretical foundations and limits of existing research.
Green Shoot Perspectives
Judgment under uncertainty, written from first principles
This section contains reflective pieces grounded in lived judgment rather than theory or cases. These are not deal stories. They are attempts to articulate how thinking changes with experience — particularly around capacity, sequencing, and restraint.
This section is intentionally sparse and evolves slowly.
Where to Start
Different readers will start in different places. There is no single correct path.
If you want a conceptual frame, start with Buy & Build Strategy.
If you are facing an upcoming acquisition, start with Target Selection & Diligence.
If you are in the middle of integration, start with Integration & Execution.
If you are feeling leadership strain, start with Leadership & Operating.
Each section introduction explains what follows and how to read selectively.
How This Project Will Evolve
New essays are published deliberately and infrequently.
The goal is not coverage or volume. It is coherence.
Over time, some sections will deepen, others will stabilize, and synthesis pieces will connect ideas across sections. The structure you see here is intended to remain stable even as the archive grows.
This project is written for readers who are willing to slow down and think carefully about how organizations actually work under complexity. If that’s useful to you, you’re in the right place.