Augmented Ideas is a newsletter written by James Loudon, a business development and strategic advisor. For 20 years, James has worked in strategic intelligence and CXO peer advisory, which has come down to one thing: getting the right senior people into a room and helping them make better calls together. This newsletter is the thinking that comes out of that, both reflective and anticipatory. More and more of what matters today happens outside the corporate perimeter, which is why effective organisations engage in community and ecosystem building.

James does not pretend to have the answers. He talks to corporate executives regularly, and prefers to draw views out rather than hand them down, taking a wide-angle and open view, sometimes two contradictory ones at once when the issue demands it.

The newsletter is a mix of curated observations focused on the levers that drive European competitiveness, from AI to geopolitics. It also covers how executive peer groups come together to work, and how you build connective tissue between the different stakeholders in an ecosystem.