Any decision that is expensive to get wrong.
The method does not change between industries. What changes is what a wrong decision sets in motion, who examines it afterwards, and how quickly the evidence goes stale. Six markets are set out in detail below, but the work is not limited to them. If a decision carries real consequence, it fits.
Set out in detail
Life sciences and pharmaceuticals
Programme decisions commit years of capital before any revenue exists, and the evidence behind them is examined by regulators, partners and licensing counterparties long after the call was made.
What they bring us
Whether a therapeutic or platform claim is supported by the primary literature, as distinct from what is widely repeated
How a candidate stands against the field on the evidence rather than on conference narrative
Whether an in-licensing or partnering target is what its data room presents
What the current regime requires of a market entrant, and what is under consultation
Quorum leads here. The decisions are bounded, consequential and examined afterwards. Compass keeps the surrounding field in view between them.
Financial services
Positions are taken on a thesis and defended to an investment committee, an auditor or a supervisor. The reasoning has to be reconstructable by someone who was not in the room.
What they bring us
Whether the disconfirming evidence for a house view was ever genuinely sought
Whether a technology or business-model claim inside a holding is real or announced
Where a market figure everyone quotes actually originates
How a position would look if the strongest argument against it were stated first
Quorum leads here. The audit record is the product: what was asked, what was established, what was not, and who ruled on the disputed points.
Energy and infrastructure
Commitments run for decades and cannot be reversed cheaply. The technical, regulatory and supply-side picture underneath them changes faster than the assets do.
What they bring us
Whether a technology route is deployed at scale or demonstrated and announced
How a project stands against comparable schemes on evidenced performance
Whether a supplier or counterparty can support the commitment being made
What would have to be true for a chosen route to be the wrong one
Quorum leads here. The commitment is bounded, irreversible and examined afterwards, so it is settled once and on the record.
Investment and capital markets
The expensive failure in diligence is not missing information. It is a process that confirms what the deal team already believed, thoroughly, and produces a memo nobody can later use to establish what was actually known.
What they bring us
Technology and capability diligence: is the claim real, or announced and never shipped
Thesis validation, and specifically the evidence against the thesis the team already holds
Competitive position on the evidence rather than the narrative
Portfolio positions that need re-testing rather than re-reporting
Both apply here. Quorum settles the individual diligence question and preserves the disagreement inside the system rather than averaging it. Compass keeps the portfolio and the surrounding field current between deals.
Public sector and policy
Allocation decisions are made with public money and examined by ministries, funders and public auditors. A public record of the reasoning is not a preference here; it is the condition of the work.
What they bring us
Whether a sector bet is structurally supported by evidence or by momentum
Where national and regional capability actually sits, mapped rather than asserted
Whether a programme or cluster is performing against the global field
What the evidence base for a published position will look like when it is challenged
Quorum leads here. The allocation or the published claim has to hold up when it is challenged, and the record of how it was reached is the product.
Research and innovation institutions
Decades of work sit across departments, formats and people who have moved on. The value is real and, in practice, invisible, both to the institution that owns it and to everyone who needs it.
What they bring us
What the institution actually holds, connected rather than catalogued
Where a group, programme or cluster stands against the global field
Which assets have a route to application, and to whom
Whether a funding allocation is defensible to the body that will ask
Both apply here. Compass leads: the value is in seeing what the institution already holds, kept current. Quorum follows when one bounded question has to be defensible to an industrial partner or a funder.
The six above are worked through as illustrations. They are not a boundary, and they are not a ranking.
The method is indifferent to sector. It asks whether a decision is expensive to get wrong, whether the reasoning has to hold up to someone who was not in the room, and whether being confidently wrong would be costly. That shape occurs everywhere:
Technology and software
Manufacturing and industrials
Healthcare providers
Telecommunications and media
Transport and logistics
Chemicals and materials
Insurance and reinsurance
Legal and professional services
Consumer goods and retail
Construction and real estate
Agriculture and food systems
If your industry is not listed at all, that is not a reason it will not fit. Bring us your high-stakes decision.
What this does not do, in any market.
It does not make the decision, and it does not carry the accountability for it. It produces the evidence base and records the person on your side who signed it off.
It does not substitute for legal advice, for your auditor, or for your regulator's view. It gives all three something they can examine.
It does not predict. It establishes what is currently supportable, and how strongly.