Intellectual Frontiers

A think tank that builds consequential things

We turn unusual ideas into books, open tools, research, patents, software, companies and investments.

We've been creating for a while: patents filed since 2002, marks in use since 1998, papers in journals since 2022, essays since 2022, posts since 2024. Our clients include the U.S. Federal Government and their Prime Contractors, Fortune 500, non-profits and many others.

AI-Prepared Dashboards Add Data Faster Than People Can Decide

This paper argues that AI-prepared dashboards and digests add information faster than people can act on it, and proposes a Decisions & NBA Board: a short queue of decisions, each with cited evidence, options, an owner with authority and a dated check on the result. It matters because a report that changes no decision is a cost. No hypothesis has been tested.

12 October 2026

Communicating Engineering Team Effectiveness to Executive Peers

This paper proposes a field-testable operating model for CTOs: one traceable evidence base that executive peers can inspect for their own jobs without relying on the CTO's persuasion. It matters because senior leaders often judge engineering by remembered incidents and impressions. The six hypotheses have not been tested.

1 October 2026

Unleash DD214 as the Olive Button

This paper proposes Olive Button, a Blue Button-style FHIR implementation pattern for DD214 service data that helps meet the 30-, 120-, and 180-day mandates of Executive Order 14426 using existing systems and standards. It matters because the order now requires records sharing at separation. The FHIR mapping is an implementation hypothesis, and the order does not mandate FHIR.

1 October 2026

Intellectual Frontiers Press

Intellectual Frontiers publishes working manuals for the people who build, buy, and run critical systems.

Cover of Acquired Alpha

Acquired Alpha

How Buyers Tell Real Advantage From a Good Demo

Forthcoming
Cover of Anthology

Anthology

A No-BS Guide to Building & Buying Digital Health

Forthcoming
Cover of Building the Workforce

Building the Workforce

Setting Up the Repository and Building the Inputs for an AI Workforce That Finds Who Is Ready to Act

Forthcoming
Cover of FixedOps Performance

FixedOps Performance

A Fieldbook for Finding Leakage, Coaching Performance, and Building a More Resilient Dealership

ForthcomingExperiment
Cover of For Leaders

For Leaders

How to Fund, Govern, and Judge an AI Workforce That Finds Who Is Ready to Act

Forthcoming
Cover of Running the Workforce

Running the Workforce

Operating an AI Workforce That Finds Who Is Ready to Act, from Its First Scheduled Job to Run

Forthcoming
Cover of The Method

The Method

How to Build AI-Native Systems That Find the Right Customers, Investors, Partners, Acquirers, Talent, and Funders at the Right Time

Forthcoming
Cover of You Are Not the User

You Are Not the User

How B2B Software Lost Touch With the People Who Do the Work, and How AI Gives Us a Chance to Fix It

Forthcoming

Products you can use today

All products →

Open skills to hand to your own AI or follow by hand, and the software and services anyone can use to build consequential solutions.

Skill

Administrative Denominator Reduction

When a practice wants to cut what a Medicare between-visit program costs to run without cutting care, decide what to automate first, find out whether it really needs another coordinator or nurse, or stop a monitoring or alert stream from…

Skill

AI Automation Triage

When the user wants to decide which tasks or capabilities their team should automate with AI, which need human review or decision rights, and which AI is quietly eroding versus strengthening as a real advantage.

Skill

Bare Metal Day 2 Runbook

When the user wants to execute or rehearse a Bare Metal Software Day 2 operational procedure against their own system - restoring from backup, rotating a secret, shipping a hotfix, onboarding or offboarding a customer, handling a vulnerable…

Skill

Bare Metal Security Defaults Audit

When the user wants to audit or design their application's security posture using Bare Metal Software's "four attackers" model and crown-jewels framework, including mapping defaults to a regulated buyer's security questionnaire.

Skill

Bootstrap a Chief of Staff

When the user wants to set up an AI Chief of Staff for a software project - a persistent reasoning layer that watches a repository's specifications, decisions, issues, tests, and meetings, and reconciles them, without becoming the project's…

Skill

Build (and Keep Alive) Your Engineering Playbook

When a technology leader wants to build a real, living engineering playbook — starting with version control, code review, and CI/CD — instead of a rulebook nobody reads, or wants to audit an existing set of engineering processes and set up…

Cover of JINFRO, Vol. 1 · No. 4 · Autumn 2026

Published Research in The Journal of Intellectual Frontiers

Position

Eidolons: A Working Digital Reflection

A working digital reflection of a person, company, customer, product, or system: a likeness with enough grounded evidence for an AI to reason about the real thing accurately and flexibly.

Position

Intellectual Product-Led Growth

IPLG: the framework for turning a unit's research, frameworks, and expertise into something a visitor can use directly, and Press's own discipline for how an intellectual product gets promoted, sold, and diffused without becoming marketing.

AI-Prepared Dashboards Add Data Faster Than People Can Decide

This paper argues that AI-prepared dashboards and digests add information faster than people can act on it, and proposes a Decisions & NBA Board: a short queue of decisions, each with cited evidence, options, an owner with authority and a dated check on the result. It matters because a report that changes no decision is a cost. No hypothesis has been tested.

12 October 2026

Working paper

Communicating Engineering Team Effectiveness to Executive Peers

This paper proposes a field-testable operating model for CTOs: one traceable evidence base that executive peers can inspect for their own jobs without relying on the CTO's persuasion. It matters because senior leaders often judge engineering by remembered incidents and impressions. The six hypotheses have not been tested.

1 October 2026

Working paper

Unleash DD214 as the Olive Button

This paper proposes Olive Button, a Blue Button-style FHIR implementation pattern for DD214 service data that helps meet the 30-, 120-, and 180-day mandates of Executive Order 14426 using existing systems and standards. It matters because the order now requires records sharing at separation. The FHIR mapping is an implementation hypothesis, and the order does not mandate FHIR.

1 October 2026

Working paper

Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology

Research Code Sharing in Support of Gold Standard Science

This article argues that sharing research code in an open access, version-controlled repository benefits science and individual researchers, and aligns with the NIH Gold Standard Science program and the FAIR and TRUST pr

Ventures, companies and funds

All of them →

Venture

Ambient Biomarkers Reference Lab

A reference lab for biomarkers captured passively from ordinary sensors: voice, gait, respiration, facial expression, wearable and metabolic signals, standardized into panels, reported like any other lab result, and governed by an integrated review board and clinician network.

In build

Fund

Care Delivery Fund II

Back the clinicians rebuilding care delivery. An intelligence engine built on CMS and claims data decides whether the firm invests in a founder already in motion, takes selective control of an operator worth re-platforming, or builds the company itself.

In formation

Venture

Continuous Care OS

An operating system for supervising an accountable digital care operation. A clinical leader reviews decisions, evidence, and billing as a queue of work with owners and dates, instead of hunting through a dashboard for whatever went wrong.

In build

Venture

OurHakeem

Verified practitioner consults delivered online, with a real operating stack behind the booking screen: intake, a longitudinal care record, agents that carry the routine work, a clinician copilot, and the compliance apparatus a regulated consult requires.

In build

Venture

Payshent

An HSA card that pays patients a data dividend for consented, de-identified health data. No surveys, no tracking: the value exchange rides on the card transaction itself. The privacy architecture (HIPAA Expert Determination de-identification, transparent revocable consent, IRB oversight for research partnerships) is the work, not the marketing.

In build

Fund

Care Delivery Fund I

A small, working fund that incubates the foundational ventures and shared services the rest of the portfolio will run on: demand intelligence, revenue operations, an execution layer for providers, and ambient measurement.

Active now