Leaders who care about solving a hard problem that affects millions or billions of people often start with the same questions:

Who has the money? Who has the mandate? How do we get close to them?

There’s an alternative:

Do the economics support building a market in the mission?

Starting from money and mandates consumes significant time and reputational capital in optimising for access. Strategies end up designed around budget cycles, institutional priorities, and frameworks that were not built around the health, education, financial access, or climate outcomes that actually matter.

The result from this default starting point is familiar: meetings, strategies, and pilots, but very few positions that can hold without strong relationship management and new funding. The cost is years of leadership attention diluted across work that was never structurally set up to endure.

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