00About the firm
See the larger opportunity.
Talbot West is an enterprise advisory and engineering firm that identifies and develops economic opportunities across complex enterprises and industrial systems.
Four commitments
01 / Enterprise judgment
Understand the larger economics
A positive return does not make an investment the best use of capital. A local improvement does not necessarily improve the larger result. An opportunity may depend on relationships that no single participant controls.
We evaluate opportunities against the larger economic objective, competing uses of resources, dependencies, and future possibilities.
02 / Integrated expertise
Integrate the relevant expertise
Strategy, finance, operations, engineering, and organizational design illuminate different parts of an economic undertaking.
We bring the relevant perspectives together to establish a coherent understanding and course of action.
03 / Independent mechanism choice
Select mechanisms on their merits
We have no software to resell and receive no platform commissions.
AI, conventional software, process changes, custom engineering, existing platforms, external providers, or a decision not to invest may all be appropriate.
Each mechanism earns its place through the economics and requirements of the opportunity.
04 / Continuous accountability
Connect decisions with execution
Implementation creates evidence.
Integration exposes dependencies. Engineering reveals technical constraints. Adoption tests operating assumptions. New information changes economics. Technology changes the available choices.
We keep the economic reasoning connected to execution, so new evidence changes the course when it should.
Artificial intelligence
Develop intelligence where it creates economic value
AI changes more than individual tasks. It creates opportunities to reconsider how organizations use information, coordinate activity, and develop new capabilities.
Talbot West combines machine learning, AI engineering, custom harnesses, software architecture, data, and integration with enterprise strategy and commercial judgment. We invest in proprietary specificity where it matters and keep commodity technology replaceable.
Industrial capability
Develop productive capacity across boundaries
Industrial output depends on relationships among engineering, manufacturing, suppliers, customers, capital, and institutions. Opportunities include recovering capacity, changing production methods, and developing complementary capabilities.
Some opportunities require assembling investments, ownership arrangements, and commercial interests that no participant has yet brought together. Through the American Industrial Capability Project, Talbot West researches these possibilities and engages the organizations positioned to pursue them.
Talbot
Hold the trail
The Talbot was a hunting hound known for following a scent across difficult terrain.
Complex opportunities extend through specialized disciplines, competing interpretations, and organizational boundaries. We follow the consequential relationships and maintain sight of the larger objective.
West
Operate at the frontier
Technology, industry, and economic arrangements continually change the possibilities available to enterprises.
New capabilities change what enterprises can accomplish and which investments make economic sense.
We help organizations recognize those possibilities, understand their economics, and develop the capabilities to pursue them.
CEO
Jacob Andra
Leads enterprise strategy, development of economic opportunities, and work in organizational intelligence and industrial capability. Author of A Theory of Enterprise Coherence and leader of AICP.
Co-Founder & SVP, AI Solutions Architecture
Stephen Karafiath
Co-founder and technical leader with extensive experience in enterprise software, systems architecture, data, integration, and artificial intelligence.
Team
Talbot West combines senior expertise across strategy, architecture, engineering, AI, data, governance, operations, and organizational implementation.
We assemble the expertise required by the enterprise objective rather than defining the objective around one specialty.
One rule governs everything Do right by the client, and leave them better off than they would have been without us.
Where to start
You do not need to arrive with a predetermined technology, provider, or implementation plan.
You may be allocating modernization capital, choosing among competing initiatives, reconsidering an architecture, introducing a new capability, correcting an implementation already underway, or deciding whether a proposed investment deserves to exist at all.
We can enter wherever the consequential choice currently stands and connect the decisions required to produce the strongest enterprise result.