Spyglass works with PE-backed companies in the post-deal window, founder-led companies scaling up, divisional leaders inside larger organizations, and operators moving cross-border or into politically sensitive or regulatory terrain. The opportunity is real, but the operating model is still being built for it. That is the problem space where Spyglass thrives.
Spyglass is brought in when the direction is clear but the path is not yet mapped. Sometimes execution has started, but the operating model is not holding. Sometimes the work is novel enough that the right moves only become clear in motion. Sometimes the missing piece is capacity. Spyglass works directly with leadership and the teams executing the work to design the operating structure that lets the plan land in the real world, then stays embedded to drive it.
Our work lives in unfamiliar markets, novel technology, and politically sensitive or regulatory environments where the playbook is unwritten, ambiguous, or in motion.
Three engagement shapes, two specialty diagnostics, each scoped to a real situation. Most engagements begin with the Inflection Point Diagnostic. It is the lowest-risk way to test the fit and the fastest way to produce a real plan.
A focused, standalone engagement. By the end, leadership has enough clarity to decide the next step.
Best fit: When the opportunity is clear but the path to deliver it is not.
Deliverables:
A focused, time-boxed engagement that builds the execution pathway so the work can run. Surfaces the binding constraints, builds the stakeholder alignment plan, and drives the first concrete moves that turn the plan into motion.
The Sprint is for the buyer who has named the bottleneck, does not need more diagnosis, and needs the operating structure built and the first moves shipped before the team can carry it forward.
By the end you will have an operating cadence the team can run, the binding constraint addressed, and the first measurable execution milestone hit, with a handoff plan for ongoing execution.
Best fit:
A time-bound operating role. Spyglass stays involved through execution until the operating model stabilizes, then transitions out to an internal team. Outcomes by month. Not activities by week.
By the end the operating model holds without us, with the team running the cadence, the decisions documented, and the handoff complete.
Best fit: PE portfolio companies in post-deal transformation. Corporate clients in international expansion. Well-funded growth companies that need a senior operator at executive level without the headcount commitment.
For businesses and organizations moving cross-border between the US and Latin America in either direction. Covers nearshoring, regional market entry, US market entry for Latin American businesses, and operating-layer work for existing cross-border footprints.
Best fit: Businesses and organizations moving across the US and Latin America corridor in either direction, where the operating reality in the destination market is unfamiliar.
By the end you will have a clear market-entry plan, the stakeholder map and local relationships identified, the partnership and team strategy in place, and introductions to key contacts in the destination market.
If your AI investment is not yet producing measurable value, the technology is rarely the bottleneck. The friction lives underneath, in the operating layer: decision rights, ownership of adoption, incentives, and the way work has to change to absorb the technology. Recent research from MIT NANDA, RAND, and PwC points in the same direction: most enterprise AI pilots are not reaching production or producing measurable value, and the failure mode is usually organizational rather than purely technical.
This is a focused engagement that finds where deployment is actually stuck and produces a clear, decision-ready path through it. For PE portfolio companies, growth-stage operators, and divisional leaders deploying AI into complex environments.
Best fit: Organizations with AI pilots that have not yet crossed into production, or where AI investment is not yet producing measurable operating value.
By the end you will have the binding constraint named, the deployment-readiness gaps mapped, the use cases sequenced against actual capacity, and a clear path to production.
Ductor was a European technology platform with real science and committed capital, but no playbook for getting from R&D to a deployed commercial facility in the Americas. Came in first as a commercialization advisor, then embedded as operating lead for the Americas and built the division from zero. The work crossed borders, languages, and disciplines: a Mexico facility delivered through a joint venture structured to preserve operational and IP control, multi-country team coordination across the US, Finland, and Mexico, with geographically separated specialty teams operating under different cultural and institutional defaults. The business model itself adapted in real time as the market and regulatory environment revealed themselves: a co-product re-priced through a first-of-its-kind US certification (CDFA Organic) created roughly 15x value uplift and made the platform financeable. The work ran straight through commissioning during the COVID liquidity freeze, and the company closed a growth-capital round in the same period. The facility is still operating today, and the commercial model it proved is scaling worldwide through a joint venture with TotalEnergies targeting 15 to 20 facilities.
The constraint pattern recurs. The institutions, sectors, and geographies vary.
Came in as confidential strategic advisor to the founder-CEO with full access to the board, embedded in London. Used that vantage to conceive and launch the platform's international development arm, growing it from a one-person mandate to a multi-country operation. Across Brazil, Chile, and Poland, owned the commercial structures and partner relationships rather than the engineering or permitting. Negotiated MOUs and structured joint ventures with Aggrego in Brazil and CEN SA in Chile, opened a commercial relationship with Brazil Foods (BRF) for long-term supply, and advanced a 30MW project toward financial close. In Poland, structured a three-way partnership with the local developer INVEN and the integrated producer CEDROB.
Led an engagement commissioned by the Inter-American Development Bank for a US technology developer. Authored the report: sized the regional opportunity, selected Panama as the launch market, and built the case around the national industry association and its two dominant producers. Surfaced the constraint the developer's team had missed, that the local industry leaders were quietly weighing why they should trust a US company over a domestic one, and repositioned the offer to answer it before co-presenting in Panama City. Both market leaders expressed willingness to participate in feasibility studies funded by the Bank.
The work is the credential. The bench flexes around the engagement.
The through-line of my career has been business transformation at execution inflection points. Bringing innovation to bear on the complex new problems of our time, in thinking, in problem-solving, in science, and in technology. Cross-border deployment and institution-building across the Americas and Europe. The commercialization of frontier and first-of-kind technologies in markets that have not yet evolved to receive them. The work spans strategy through execution: shaping the direction, then making it survive contact with the institutions, operating reality, and stakeholders that decide whether it actually lands.
I create value where the opportunity is real but the path forward is unclear, and success depends on judgment in unfamiliar terrain. I am typically brought in when something important needs to work, but does not yet. A first-of-a-kind technology. A new market. A business model that does not fit existing systems. My role is to make ambition executable: align the stakeholders, structure the path, build the operating layer that holds under real-world constraints.
The work has spanned UNESCO in Paris, where I translated IPCC climate science for governments that needed it to land politically; a founder-led, London-based platform, where I built the international development arm across Brazil, Chile, and Poland; and a first-of-kind European technology platform, where I served as embedded operating lead through cross-border commercialization across the Americas, multi-country team coordination, a first-of-its-kind US certification, a Fortune-scale joint venture, and a growth-capital raise during the COVID liquidity freeze.
Spyglass is a principal-led business transformation practice. Clients always get Jennifer as the constant. Senior specialist partners are sourced engagement by engagement; the bench flexes around the work.
Independent Expert, IASP, the global network of 350+ innovation hubs across 70+ countries.
Most Spyglass engagements begin with a short conversation. If you are exploring paths forward, get in touch. We'll compare notes and see whether the work fits.
inquiries@spyglassadvisor.com