The Shift.
Chris Salazar's editorial column on the operating shape of the AI era. Slow-moving. Opinionated. Pieces from the founder of Innovative Group on positioning, the operating floor, and the operator's read on what's changing.
New pieces monthly · Reading time 5–10 minutes
Featured
The H2 2026 read on who's actually buying.
A research-grounded snapshot of mid-market buying behavior in the agent era. The most-referenced piece across IG conversations this quarter.
Research Snapshot · H2 2026
H2 2026 Buyer Snapshot.
A teaser of the full State of the Buyer H2 2026 research report. What mid-market buyers are spending on AI, where the Big Four can't reach, and what the operating-company shape produces at this stage of the cycle.
Just Published · June 9, 2026
The CISO seat just became critical.
Anthropic shipped Claude Fable 5 today. The CISO market read the launch wrong. The operator's read on what actually changed.
The Operating Floor · New today
Mythos Just Shipped. Your CISO Strategy Just Got Harder.
The CISO services market dipped about three percent on the Fable 5 launch under the assumption AI would shrink the security surface. Wrong direction. The attack surface expanded, the mid-market is now the most exposed cohort, and the fractional CISO chair moved from discretionary to load-bearing inside a single news cycle.
Series 01 · The Wedge
Positioning bets, in two parts.
A two-piece arc on what IG bets on when it picks where to play. The agent-era reframe of B2B GTM, then the operator follow-up on what clients actually see.
Part 1 · The Wedge
Catering to the Agent.
When the buyer stops being a person, the website stops being a brochure. A short note on the agent era of B2B GTM, and how Next Best Action becomes the wedge.
Part 2 · The Wedge
Why our clients see what we are doing.
IG is becoming a portfolio of agency visibility products. Beat for local businesses, Next Best Action for B2B SaaS. Visibility is the relationship, not a feature.
Series 02 · The Operating Floor
Where the work actually has to land.
Mid-market dynamics, structural gaps, the operating shape the Big Four can't reach down to. Pieces about the cohort IG was built to run alongside.
The Operating Floor
Mid-market is the missing layer in the Big Four AI rollouts.
EY shipped 150 tax agents. Deloitte shipped Zora. Both serve the floor above mid-market. The work has to land somewhere between $5M and $200M, and that floor is where the operating gap actually is.
The Operating Floor · New
Mythos Just Shipped. Your CISO Strategy Just Got Harder.
The CISO market dipped on the Fable 5 launch. Wrong direction. Mid-market is now the most exposed cohort. The fractional CISO chair moved from discretionary to load-bearing.
Series 03 · Operator Notes
Why we operate the way we operate.
Founder reflections on the structural choices behind IG. The holding-company instinct we killed. The experiment-to-operations pattern we wrote down.
Operator Notes
Why we killed our holding-company instincts.
The structural choice that almost made IG a holding company instead of an operating company, and what changed our mind. A note on the operating shape we settled on.
Operator Notes
Ex Experimento ad Operationem.
Innovative Group's POV on how AI moves from experiment to operation in 2026, across our six specialty teams. The Latin is the framework.
Editorial Partner Contributions
Earlier pieces, from Norm.
Slower-moving editorial from Norm DeSilva, IG Executive Partner. Kept in the archive because the framing still travels.
Ground Truth · Ashlesha Khond
The engineering discipline behind marketing that holds up.
A new column from Ashlesha Khond, Marketing Program Manager at Innovative Group. The QA mindset carried into websites, SEO, and AI search, written for operators who want to catch what everyone else scrolled past.
Ground Truth
Viva Voce.
With the living voice. Your best content already lives in your experts' heads. Why video and voice are the fastest way to get it out, with the data.
Ground Truth
Extra Muros.
Outside the walls. Why the work that wins AI search happens off the page you own, in the mentions, reviews, and citations you do not control.
Ground Truth
Nullius in Verba.
Take nobody's word for it. Why a launch is the start of the work, and what an unseen break costs your brand in the age of AI search.
The Full Column
Where IG places its bets, and why.
The positioning bets behind where IG plays, the mid-market floor where the work has to land, and the structural calls behind how the firm operates.
Ground Truth
Viva Voce.
With the living voice. The scarce input in AI-era content is first-hand expertise, and your operators already hold it. Why video and voice capture it fastest.
Ground Truth
Extra Muros.
Outside the walls. Why AI search is won off the page you own: the mentions, reviews, and citations the models actually trust.
Ground Truth
Nullius in Verba.
Take nobody's word for it. Why a launch is the start of the work, and what an unseen break costs your brand in AI search.
The Operating Floor
Mythos Just Shipped. Your CISO Strategy Just Got Harder.
The CISO market dipped on the Fable 5 launch. Wrong direction. Mid-market is now the most exposed cohort and the fractional CISO chair turned load-bearing.
Research Snapshot
H2 2026 Buyer Snapshot.
The three numbers that explain how mid-market buyers are buying in mid-2026, and where the Big Four cannot reach.
Fractional CMO
Next Decade of Fractional CMO: Human-Led, AI-Leveraged.
Firms still selling hours will spend the decade explaining why. Human-led and AI-leveraged is the model that replaces them.
Fractional CMO
The Mid-Market Skipped the CMO. Now It's Skipping It Again.
Mid-market has skipped the CMO hire for a decade. The reasons changed, the pattern did not. What fractional CMO actually solves.
Editorial Partner
Editorial discipline as competitive moat.
Every B2B page now sounds the same, and buyers can tell. Removing that sameness is a discipline, not a style guide.
The Operating Floor
Mid-market is the missing layer in the Big Four AI rollouts.
EY shipped 150 tax agents, Deloitte shipped Zora. Both serve the floor above mid-market. The work still has to land between $5M and $200M.
Editorial Partner
The AEO decade.
SEO had thirty years to compound. The agent layer of the web will compound faster. The case for treating the next ten years as a parallel discipline.
Editorial Partner
Visibility Products II: from SEO to AEO.
AI agents now sit between the buyer and the page. The visibility surface has to move with them, from SEO to AEO.
The Wedge
Catering to the Agent.
When the buyer stops being a person, the website stops being a brochure. The agent era of B2B GTM, and how Next Best Action becomes the wedge.
The Wedge
Why our clients see what we are doing.
IG is becoming a portfolio of agency visibility products. Beat for local businesses, Next Best Action for B2B SaaS. Visibility is the relationship.
Operator Notes
Why we killed our holding-company instincts.
The structural choice that almost made IG a holding company instead of an operating company, and what changed our mind.
Operator Notes
Ex Experimento ad Operationem.
Innovative Group's view on how AI moves from experiment to operation in 2026, across the six specialty teams. The Latin is the framework.
Editorial Partner
Entia non sunt multiplicanda. Keeping it simple.
Norm DeSilva on why subtraction beats addition in modern operations. A field note on the discipline of less.