Q1 Roundup: Compounding context
Prime Future 2967: Strategy, capital, and innovation in animal protein
One might wonder why, since my interest lies at the intersection of animal protein and innovation, I write so much about patterns among progressive producers (at one end of the value chain) or about trends in retail brands (at the opposite end).
It’s a question I’ve been asking myself as Prime Future nears its 6th birthday, and I consider where I want to direct my curiosity in the future.
Related, a skill I’m working on is writing problem statements more clearly and concisely:
What is the problem to be solved?
What is the evidence that the problem exists?
What are the consequences if the problem persists?
From an innovation perspective, tech or non-tech, understanding the problem starts with how the customer thinks about it.
Stepping back, to understand the future of animal protein, we have to understand how producers, processors, and retail/foodservice think and what problems they believe are worth solving.
I have a strongly held conviction that where innovators go wrong is when we don’t understand our customers’ mental models. (Ok I’ll only speak for myself — this is where I’ve ridden right off the rails in the past!)
I also have a strongly held conviction that where companies go wrong — whether startups or Fortune 500 — is when they don’t understand their customers’ context.
And, I have a strongly held conviction that the above two statements are true for *every leader* in the value chain, whether agtech founder, livestock producer, animal health executive, or packer CEO.
Customer context matters.
Customer context matters enormously for every product sold to solve a problem, whether it’s a widget, an app, a weaned calf, a finished hog, or a tanker load of milk.
In that spirit, here are three questions I’m asking myself as Q1 2026 winds down:
(1) What assumptions am I making about my customer that are wrong?
(2) What truths about my customers am I missing?
(3) Which logic fallacies are preventing me from better understanding my customer?
Shane Thomas, author of Upstream Ag Insights, wrote a fantastic article titled, “Mindware: 33 Mental Models for The Modern Agribusiness Leader” and the intro alone is instructive:
The term Mindware was popularized by psychologist Richard Nisbett to describe a combination of mental models, reasoning strategies, and frameworks that help people think clearly and make better decisions.
It’s effectively cognitive software — the internal code we run to solve problems, analyze trade-offs, and interpret the world.
Mental models are at the heart of mindware. They are simplified representations of how the world works — patterns, principles, and frameworks that help you see clearly in complex environments. They’re the shortcuts to insight and the differentiator in demanding situations and important decisions.
As Charlie Munger, the godfather of mental models, put it:
“Developing the habit of mastering the multiple models which underlie reality is the best thing you can do.”
Thinking about how to think is an investment that compounds when applied to thinking about how my customer thinks.
I want to think about what I’m thinking about so I can level up my mindware, but I also want to think about what my customers are thinking about so I can innovate better / learn out loud more usefully by understanding their mindware.
And my customers, in this instance Prime Future readers, are thinking about what they think about, but they’re also thinking about what their customers think about. And so on and on and on.
While it’s undeniably true for those making interesting bets and shaping the future, the uncomfortable truth is that intentionally strengthening mindware in order to better solve problems for customers is simply not a focus for the mediocre majority of folks you and I work with. Which is all the more reason to double down on it.
What a time to be alive 🙂
ICYMI, below are a few of my fav mental models from Q1.
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The Zuckerberg of cattle
The intersection of the beef and dairy industries in that oh-so-miraculous phenom known as beef-on-dairy has been propelled to the stratosphere in recent years as good old-fashioned market forces have collided:
How to distinguish short-term fads from enduring shifts
At the 2021 Meta Connect conference, where Facebook rebranded as Meta and put the metaverse at the center of its corporate strategy, Mark Zuckerberg declared, “The metaverse will be the successor to the mobile internet. The best way to understand the metaverse is to experience it yourself — but it’s a little tough because it doesn’t fully exist yet.”
Four Patterns to Escape Agricultural Gravity
Welcome back to the series on Escape Velocity, a term I’m borrowing from the tech industry because actualllly the ag industry called dibs on the idea back when Silicon Valley was pastures and orchards.
Join fellow innovators in kicking around these mental models and more, specific to strategy, capital, and innovation in animal protein, by upgrading your Prime Future subscription.
Excellent vehicle for additional thinking! Thanks!
I continue to see less common sense as companies grow.
Further from the customer and feel for the customer.
I’d like to see examples of how large companies get closer to the suppliers and end consumers while scaling!