The best of The Business Engineer – 2024 Yearbook

In the last decade, I've been looking at hundreds of deep tech business models and, in the process, developing my own way of looking at the business world.

I named Business Engineering (this is an entirely different view from the classic definition of it) to mean it is an intersection between three core disciplines:

And many moving parts:

If you’ve been following myself, for long enough, you know the gist of it moves around three key elements:

• Business modeling.

• Technological paradigms.

• Non-linear thinking.

Each of these elements come together into a whole, which is Business Engineering, that in short is really a way to grasp the current technological paradigm, through the lens of the business models that are thick during that paradigm, with a non-linear approach.

Meaning, I remove the noise of what might be called “transitional business models” (which also encalsupate transitional technologies) to understand what’s coming next, as a durable wave of new players into the new paradigm.

For instance, thirty years back, as we moved from the computing age, to the Internet age, various paradigms opened up.

While the smartest people on the planet were betting on various paradigms to materialize, unexpectedly to everyone, the “search paradigm” became the underlying force, which would dominate the commercial web for 30 years.

I say unexpectedly, because most players, like Microsoft perhaps, were betting the house on browsing, and while browsing was quite valuable. It turned out to be a “transitional technology” which would morph into search, a la Google.

Again, when a new technological paradigm comes in place, that doesn’t mean all “transitional technologies” will fade way (though some will), but rather that those are consolidated into a whole.

For instance, instance, in my piece, Beyond Search, I’ve explained how, many moving parts that helped search become a core industry, are also underlying architectures that are helping this current AI paradigm get ahead!

Now that you got the gist of it, let’s go into the top pieces for 2024, on The Business Engineer.

I’ve enjoyed a lot this year, and I look forward to 2025, I hope this newsletter is valuable to you, to reduce the noise out there!

Top Pieces in 2024

As the Business Engineer has grown into an archive of over a hundred resources, it seems you have appreciated the piece which explained the core resources that made up The Business Engineering curriculum.

Also, as AI business models are evolving, I’ve tried to make some clarity on how these might have looked like.

I’ve published this book, for the first time, in December 2022, then updated it. This, might go into a major update as well, in 2025.

And yet, the post containing the core elements of the framework I use in the book has been one of the top posts in 2025.

A key reminder, while we’ve gotten into AI business models, there is an underlying framework, which I’ve developed over the years, that is how tech business models develop.

This is a key reminder, as an AI business model, it’s an evolution of a tech business models.

And indeed, this has been another top post in 2024.

Once you have a grasp of AI business models, and tech business models, the AI convergence will help you understand the three phases of evolution we’re going through in the coming 10-30 years.

And, as we go through it, a few AI Business Predictions coming from the hyperscalers.

Following up on the AI Business Preditions, also some emerging trends that will develop in the coming 3-5 years.

I’ve also tried to make some clarity on the whole ecosystem, the way it developed in the last decade, and where we’re going next. By looking at how did we get here? Where are we? And where are we going next?

I’ve analyzed how might a post-Google world look like, in this piece.

And why in a counterintuitive way, we’re still, only, at the beginning of this AI wave, as the infrastructures we have, are not, at all, suited for what we need net.

And how it might take another decade, to build up the infrastructures (primarily AI Data Centers) that will serve the purpose of serving the AI industry.

This will be enabled by the new AI Hardware Paradigm shaping up the whole industry.

And a key aspect, is the “slowly, then quite suddenly” move beyond search.

Are you ready for this 2025?

With massive ♥️ Gennaro Cuofano, The Business Engineer

---