How does .tic work?
Some weeks we advise, some weeks we build, some weeks we carry part of the load beside your team. The work sets the mode; the method does not. Your team’s knowledge is the starting material, and what’s left behind is a capability, not a dependency.
What is the Alignment Discovery?
A two-week joint undertaking, fixed scope, built around the decision you’re weighing. Week one surfaces the actual problem rather than the presented one, and names the standoffs no one has put in the meeting. Week two sequences the resolution and hands it back — what moves first, what’s parked, and what your team owns from week three. No pre-packaged verdict.
How does an engagement start?
With a coffee rather than a contract — an unhurried conversation, in Auckland or over a call, about the decision you’re weighing and whether there’s a fit. No scope to sign, no slides to sit through. If it’s a fit, the Alignment Discovery follows.
Where does satellite fit in a network operator’s strategy?
It depends on whether satellite is a competitor to the access layer or part of it — and most operators haven’t made that call explicitly. Direct-to-device forces the question, because it puts non-terrestrial coverage into handsets already on your network rather than into a separate terminal and a separate bill. What follows are partnership, spectrum, and portfolio decisions rather than engineering ones. The common failure is letting the commercial position form by default.
How do you move AI out of pilots and into production?
Pilots stall for structural reasons, not technical ones. The model works, but the workflow around it never changed — so the output lands beside an existing process instead of inside it, and the organisation quietly keeps doing things the old way. Getting past that means changing the operating rhythm around a workflow the business already depends on, and tying the result to the P&L rather than to a demo.
What makes deep tech and hardware harder to commercialise than software?
The feedback loops are longer and the economics less forgiving. Software can iterate its way into a market; hardware and deep tech commit capital, tooling, and supply chain long before the market answers back — so a positioning error compounds over years, not over a sprint. The failure is rarely the technology. It’s treating the commercial model as something to settle once the engineering is done, when it’s the same decision. Same problem shape as a telecommunications portfolio.
Why does margin keep leaking in a manufacturing business that is still growing?
Because complexity accumulates faster than anyone removes it. Every variant was defensible on its own, but nothing in the operating rhythm owns the decision to stop — so the range widens and engineering capacity is consumed sustaining products that no longer earn their place. Margin rarely disappears in one visible event; it leaks through a hundred reasonable ones. The fix is a portfolio decision, not a procurement one — and it sits in the same gap: between engineering and commercial leadership.
What kind of organisations does .tic work with?
The work sits at the join between engineering and commercial leadership, where structural friction quietly slows decisions. Telecommunications, deep tech, AI, and manufacturing are where the pattern library runs deepest — spanning wireless and RAN, 5G standalone, optical networks, satellite, hardware portfolios, and production lines. Those four are home ground rather than a fence: portfolio decisions behave alike across industries, so the test for work beyond them is the shape of the decision rather than the sector on the letterhead. Engagements run across consumer, SME, enterprise, government, and wholesale segments. Based in Auckland and working globally, in person or remotely.
Something here not answered? Write to percy@ticnz.com — replies come from the practitioner.