Intellectual Frontiers

Contrarian but practical thinking. Better decisions.

Intellectual Frontiers turns unique human insights into evidence, and evidence into decisions. A good idea may become research, a publication, a patent, an investment in somebody else, an experiment, a company, or a reason to stop.

Find your Native AlphaReview the patent register

Native Alpha starts as a contrarian, unusual or unique hypothesis about something the firm may know, see, control, or be unusually capable of doing. The five units test that hypothesis in different ways. They do not pass it down an assembly line. Every encounter with a reader, founder, customer, examiner, investor, operator, or market sends evidence back into the thesis.

How contrarian but practical observations move through Intellectual Frontiers: the five units and capital sources refine unusual human insights into patents, publications, software, companies, people, teams, and market belief, with a focus on evidence, real-world impact, and the right people and timing.

What we're researching

All research

Research areas

  • Engineering Care Delivery

    Engineering Care Delivery studies how care itself should be designed when technical capability becomes easier to produce but adoption, patient access, workflow, trust, reimbursement, accountability, and outcomes remain scarce.

  • Alpha to Patent

    Alpha to Patent starts with the advantage a customer values, traces it to the technical or operating constraint that creates the value, tests whether the advantage survives better AI and easier engineering, and then chooses the narrowest useful mix of patents, trade secrets, know-how, data rights, contracts, regulatory position, licensing, publication, and operating control.

  • Precision Education

    Precision Education treats the person, their context, and the evidence as the unit of learning rather than the course.

  • Unbundling Work

    Unbundling Work studies tasks, decisions, handoffs, authority, evidence, risk, and outcomes instead of treating the job title as the unit of analysis.

  • Zero Neo

    Zero Neo asks why a business should buy specialized software for operations when much of the functionality already exists in the platforms it owns, its systems of record, and increasingly capable AI.

All areas

Our patent portfolio

  • Healthcare delivery

    Referrals, care coordination, task and work list scheduling, patient navigation, and risk management. (7 families)

  • Medical devices

    Software inside and around regulated devices, and the data that moves off the device and into a chart. (3 families)

  • Clinical trials and research

    Running a study as software instead of a binder, with evidence produced while the trial runs. (1 family)

  • Insurance and digital authorization

    Self-controlled authorization to records and service delivery evidence. (3 families)

  • Payments, marketplaces, and credentialing

    Payment systems, settling marketplaces, crowdsourced credentialing, and reputation signals. (10 families)

  • Education, training, and system telemetry

    Precision education and training, rewardable content, and traceable operational telemetry. (6 families)

Review the patent registerPatent summaries

Five questions, one evidence record

Intellectual Frontiers IP

What might be true?

Turns observations into better questions, stronger theses, defensible insights, and tests. A patent is useful evidence, but it does not prove demand.

Evidence: Research, technical distinctions, rights, and disconfirming findings.

Intellectual Frontiers Press

Can anyone understand and use it?

Makes a thesis inspectable, then tests it through attention, criticism, adoption, and willingness to pay.

Evidence: Reader response, changed language, practical use, and paid demand.

Intellectual Frontiers Capital

Should another dollar move?

Tests the economics and searches for founders already pursuing the thesis. When someone else is better positioned, Capital can back them instead of rebuilding their work.

Evidence: Underwriting, founder traction, capital interest, governance, and downside.

Intellectual Frontiers Studios

What is the cheapest useful test?

Builds an experiment when the evidence remains compelling and no better-positioned builder exists. A company is one possible result, not the starting instruction.

Evidence: Customer behavior, usage, payment, renewal, and repeatable economics.

Intellectual Frontiers Network

Who should we find, and why now?

Connects every unit to founders, operators, customers, experts, partners, and investors. Finding that someone else is already doing the work can be the most valuable result.

Evidence: Conversations, worked trials, introductions, capability, and absence.

Recently published elsewhere

All papers

Bring the problem you already have.

An authorization backlog nobody can explain. Device data that will not make it into the chart. A trial that reconciles for six weeks after the last patient visit. A marketplace that cannot prove what it settled. Describe what is happening and how it was measured, and we will tell you within two weeks whether there is an invention worth testing.

Bring us a worked problem