I was in the late 80s that I set up Fractal Communications in the UK. It never happened and instead headed west - and a whole new world started up for me. BUT - the idea of fractal communications stayed with me. My early years saw social handles like fractals - eg over on Twitter - when it was good. If I was a little late to the network and it was taken - fractallion. I have presented on what I mean by it and how it works countless times. But life continued to move and it was never turned into the business I envisaged.

Fast Forward to 2026 and I find myself constantly ideating how best to package and present this new service we are developing. I can see it. I can feel it - but as my manager (Jax) oft' says to me - use less words - get clearer … its as if she is sitting in on conversations that I have with others. (I suffer a sever case of Cobbler’s children.)

This afternoon I picked up a collection of hand off docs that I keep after Claude conversations .. dropped them in a new project to strat again and in amongst its first pass of the docs …

This is the architecture. It’s fractal, not sequential.

I had not ever referenced the idea of fractal to Claude in the past. But it’s not a wrong thought.

🔗 Just in from Scott Brinker

I’ve been hypothesizing that the next iteration of great SaaS platforms could evolve toward context-as-a-service (CaaS)

Whilst I find that we seem to be on a similar journey with thought … on this we differ

Meanwhile - one of my ‘graphics under development’ .. this one talking about ‘forgetting’ the 4Ps and start thinking 4Es - that I most recently talked about 🖇️ here.

Bottom line - we keep talking about change - radical change - and yet for some reason - our thinking is not radical - witness that we keep building ‘systems of experience’ on ‘systems of record’ infrastructure.

… and we wonder why it’s not working?

Over the holidays I spent time really sorting out my Structured Thought Wiki - which is actually an Obsidian Vault on iCloud - that David Merfield’s Blot translates in to a living breathing web site. Claude helped me with a lot of the CSS - but also refining some of the cross linking between entries - the site now has 193 pages. (The nature of wikis of course - mention it once - out comes a page.)

Sorted - I now have YAML front matter including ‘pstatus’ = empty, claude, curated . and a few others besides and now bu using Desktop Commander - Claude is filling in the spaces.

This means that when you came to my wiki a week ago - basically you got a LOT of ‘stubs’

Now you typically get a page with words and images and links and cross references. All thanks to Claude - and when I have Claude do the writing - I change the pstatus from ‘empty’ to ‘claude’ - and as I go forward - as time allows - and I fix the page - well then the page status is changed to ‘curated’.

This is the kind of stuff that adds real value to what I do … I have tried to build wikis in the past - and they are HARD. ➕ I wouldn’t have anyone else do it.

I call that a #WinWin

Structured Thought Meets Music Meets The Business Equation … and probably more besides.

You say yes, I say no,
You say stop, and I say go, go, go,
Oh no.
You say goodbye and I say hello, hello, hello,

💬 Paul McCartney

First song from Paul after Brian Epstein (no relation) passed on to the next stage of his life …

Wikipedia:

“It’s such a deep theme in the universe, duality – man woman, black white, ebony ivory, high low, right wrong, up down, hello goodbye – that it was a very easy song to write.” McCartney also said that, in “Hello, Goodbye”, he was promoting “the more positive side of the duality”.

Which all came to mind this morning reading 🔗 this post by Manton Reece who observed …

If everyone can ship software, what will distinguish the successful companies from the apps that are lost in the noise?

To which I reply by quoting some lines from a less talented group of songwriters - and yet seem pertinent …

Shooting stars never stop even when they reach the top

💬 Those that believe they have won.

and

The world is my oyster

💬 Everyone else.

.. or perhaps more simply - as one door closes - another opens.

Corollary - not for everyone (the corpses of software companies that litter the technology freeway is testament to that.) … so what do we do?

The shift that Manton is describing is right - but IMHO falls short of what a business needs in The Age of Engagement which is pretty much what I have been writing about for a while now ….

Two Foundational Posts

🔗 The Age of Reason Is Over

🔗 The Age of Experience is Emerging

Just this past week

🔗 Coherence Is The New Moat

🔗 Engagement Platforms as Coherence Infrastructure

Bonus Post

🔗 Marketing in 2025 (and 2026 it turns out)

From a marketing perspective - the 4Ps have been part of the lexicon of any marketeer on this planet since before I was born. But now …

say goodbye

… to the 4Ps: Price, Place, Product and Promotion

say hello

… to The 4Es : Exchange, Ease, Essence and Experience

Price gives way to Exchange
Not what you charge. What you trade. Mutual value.

Place gives way to Ease
Not where you are. How frictionless you make it. If engagement hurts, product dies.

Product gives way to Essence
Not what you make. Who you are - through your customer’s eyes. Stop second guessing.

Promotion gives way to Experience
Not what you say. What they feel. Their perception is your only reality.

OR

You say ‘goodbye’ to ‘Product Efficient Supply Chains’ while I say ‘hello’ to ‘Customer Effective Demand Networks’

(Those are two thought threads of mine that go back to the early oughts and are integral to The Business Equation.)

When everyone can ship code (I know, I know), technical execution becomes table stakes - but I think although Manton’s words are different to my words he is recognising the shift that I keep describing … constraint has moved from PRODUCT to EXPERIENCE.

So - back to Manton’s list;

• Marketing shapes perception
• Customer support reduces friction
• Documentation enables ease (even ‘easier’ intuitive UI)
• Building trust demonstrates essence
• Speed removes barriers to engagement

These aren’t the ‘other aspects’ of running a software business. They are now the primary aspects. Code is just infrastructure. In fact just last week, my friend and partner for the development of the apps we are building said just last week.

The cost of code might be coming down - but people don’t buy code - they buy software.

Actually - being who I am I think they are buying what the software will do for them - but that’s my marketing lens. What Tony was hitting on is right from th pot of what marketeers used to call ‘Full Product’.

The 4Ps assumed scarcity of products, distribution and information, whilst the 4Es assumed abundance where engagement is the only moat.

Manton’s list is actually part of The 4Es.

• Essence: Building trust (who we actually are)
• Ease: Documentation + Speed (frictionless access)
• Exchange: Customer support (mutual value delivery)
• Experience: Marketing (perception management)

The Age of Engagement isn’t coming. It’s here. Code is just catching up.

and clearly - Jimi was way ahead of his time! (But we knew that already. Right?)

If you want to set some time to explore how all this can be used to help your business transition into the ‘Age of Experience’. 📅 Let’s Talk

TL;DR

Context as a product feature that SaaS vendors can package and sell is wrong thinking. It’s actually the foundational infrastructure layer that makes any system intelligently operational. Context is the operational intelligence that knows who, where, what, and how people interact across and with organisations and each other. In short - it is the essential layer that transforms disconnected capabilities into coherent, situationally-aware engagement.

Scott Brinker writes: 🔗 The SaaS Moats Are Crumbling, but the Opportunity Is Bigger - and I agree - but not for the reasons he lays out.

I mean he even highlights things I talk about, like

Context.

Not just in passing either, the article’s subtitle is

Context-as-a-Service (CaaS)

I’ll just let that sit while you think about that for a moment - and return later.

Business are apparently moving on from being

systems of record

… with much more ‘relevant’ thinking …

systems of truth or single source of truth.

Cough - the ‘single source of truth’? New? A branding upgrade? We used to talk about the 🔗 single source of truth when I was part of Oracle - and 🖇️ as I pointed out recently - in my early days at Oracle - I had email - and could not use it to communicate with anybody outside of Oracle that I worked with … so we know that was a looooong time ago.

And systems of truth? Whose truth?

If my cell company believes that my primary email is mickeymouse@philpin.com - because when they asked me for my primary email I gave them mickeymouse@philpin.com - that may well be their ‘truth’ - but it is certainly not mine.

But back to ‘context’ …

Context is different. Context is personal and situational. It’s knowing not just what the data says, but what it means for this marketer making this decision, or for this customer in this moment.

So why is it a new service? Spoiler Alert. It isn’t - unless you are going to add it to a list such as this;

• Buzzword-as-a-Service (BaaS) - The self-aware parody of vendor speak.
• Synergy-as-a-Service (SaaS) - Corporate nonsense on demand.
• Disruption-as-a-Service (DaaS) - Generates any pitch deck you will ever need.
• Oxygen-as-a-Service (OaaS) - Because anything that can be ‘monetised’ - will be ‘monetised’.
• Innovation-as-a-Service (IaaS) - Outsourcing the very thing you can’t outsource - but now you can.

Context is where domain expertise meets operational reality.

… amongst many other things.

Truth implies something universal and static — the same for everyone, in every situation.

It does. That’s why even 15 years ago - my mantra was

and as for ‘context’ being new thinking?

Another one from the archives

🔗 Engagement Platforms as Coherence Infrastructure

A slight restructure of this post - and so a reissue.