A signal is a reason to look closer
A conference talk, a filed comment, a post mortem, a committee roster. Each is a reason to look closer. None is proof of anything.
Intellectual Frontiers Network
Finding the people who turn good ideas into impact
For a specific piece of work, we find the few people who fit it. You get their names with the reasons attached, so you can judge the answer instead of trusting it.
We are not building another profile database. Everything a directory would ask you to type in is already public, and it goes stale within a year. Copying it into our own system would give us a slower search engine and nothing else.
A search engine returns two thousand names for a job description, and none of them comes with a reason. We come back with a few people, and for each one we write down why we picked them, what we found, what we still don't know, and what to do next. You can check our reasoning before you spend an hour on anyone.
The other four units are the customers. IP needs reviewers who have fought with the failure a claim describes. Capital needs founders who have owned the number they propose to fix. Press needs contributors who have done what they write about. Studios needs operators who will be accountable for an outcome. Network runs those searches and hands back the evidence.
Why the thesis comes before the candidates
Every search starts with a written thesis. Who would have to exist for this work to succeed. What would make them unusual. What would qualify them, and what would rule them out.
Writing it down first keeps us honest. When the right people turn out to hold a different title than we predicted, the thesis was wrong and we correct it. Those corrections are what make the next search better.
Native Alpha is a hypothesis
What we think someone is unusually good at stays a guess until a conversation or a small piece of real work tests it.
Every name comes with a reason
If we can't write one sentence about why someone came up, they shouldn't have come up. No unexplained ranking, and no match percentages.
The unknowns are listed, not hidden
Every packet says what we couldn't establish. If nothing is listed as unknown, nobody checked.
What we keep about people
Public facts are cheap, so we point at the source instead of keeping our own copy. What we do keep is what no crawler has. Who we talked to. What they said they were working on. What they turned down, and why. Who vouched for whom. What a small experiment produced.
Those notes are why a second search for the same kind of person starts warmer than the first. They also carry an obligation. Nothing from a private conversation shows up on a public page, and there is no public directory of people on this site.
What we measure, and what we refuse to
We refuse to measure profiles created, registrations, page views, messages sent. Those numbers go up when a system is busy, not when it is working.
We measure hunts with a written thesis, candidates a person judged worth contacting, conversations that changed the thesis, experiments started, outcomes, including the ones that failed. An outcome, including a failure written down honestly, is worth more than any amount of engagement.
Write the thesis before looking
We decide who we are looking for before we look. The written thesis is the work. Candidates come after.
Treat every signal as a clue
A talk, a filing, a roster. Each is a reason to look closer. None proves anything.
Native Alpha is a hypothesis
It holds only after a conversation or a small piece of real work says it does.
Always explain why someone surfaced
If we cannot write the sentence, they should not have come up.
Five strong candidates beat five hundred results
A long list usually means nobody did the thinking.
A relationship beats a profile
What someone tells us directly is worth more than anything they publish.
An outcome beats engagement
The only score we keep is whether real work happened.
Every hunt improves the next
The next search starts from what this one got wrong.
How to reach us
Tell us about yourself: one URL that best represents your work, what you are unusually good at, and what you want to be contacted about. Introduce someone: who they are, what they did that impressed you, and what you think they should be asked. Work with us: the piece of work you need carried, and what would make it a success.
There is nothing to register for. Write to us directly at hello+network@intellectualfrontiers.com.
See the method working
These pages show a search the way you would receive it, so you can judge the method before you use it. No real person is named.
- How a search runs
From the written thesis to what the outcome taught us.
- Current hunts
The theses we are searching against right now, and what each one has taught us.
- Ask Network
A real question and the answer we would send back.
- Native Alpha™
The method the whole firm runs on, applied here to people rather than inventions.
- Tell us about yourself
One URL, what you are unusually good at, and what to contact you about.
A relationship beats a profile, and an outcome beats engagement. If a search here does not end in someone doing real work, it did not work, whatever the counts say.