How value gets built.
Field notes on digital transformation, value creation and the operating system behind a higher exit multiple, from inside private equity and the global C-suite.
Our thesis is not ours alone. Here it is, pillar by pillar, next to the independent research that backs it, one click from the source. Their words, our framing, each dated by its source .
Two engines. Growth and profit, at once.
MakersOS runs two engines together: optimise the business you have, and build the one you could become. Stand still, or bet on only one, and you lose both.
New products alone stopped being the engine
Gartner reads 1,180 growth investments across more than 500 large firms and finds around 70% aimed at monetising what a company already owns and at platform strategies, against 21% on new product innovation.
Exploit and explore, at once
Alexander Osterwalder’s Invincible Company is built on the same discipline: manage today’s businesses while exploring tomorrow’s growth engines.
The winners run both engines
McKinsey’s 2026 survey of 1,719 respondents finds about 6% attributing 5% or more of EBIT to AI; what sets them apart is pursuing growth and innovation alongside the efficiency four in five respondents chase.
Business first, technology second.
AI has to move a number a CFO can underwrite. Deploying tools is not the same as creating value.
Measured AI pays, unmeasured AI drifts
Gartner surveys 1,303 respondents: firms that track AI returns and cut what underperforms see positive returns on 81% of initiatives, while one in nine cannot say what their function spent on AI last year.
Deploying AI is not creating value
Gartner is blunt with CFOs: stop mistaking finance-AI deployment for value creation, and manage to the outcome.
Boards buy value, not productivity
Gartner surveys 204 finance leaders and finds AI spend piling into productivity while boards reward what creates new value; the gap is the whole case for business first.
Digital re-rates the multiple.
Digital and AI maturity is a value-creation lever an owner controls , from diligence to exit. Execution now decides the return; the original deal thesis only opens the door.
Value creation is now execution-led
McKinsey finds the half-life of the deal thesis shrinking; the practices reshaping PE returns are adaptive and execution-led.
AI maturity re-rates the multiple
Across 471 PE-backed companies, McKinsey ties each rung of AI maturity to a higher revenue multiple, and the largest jump comes when AI changes what the company sells.
The multiple is earned now
Gain analyses 15,502 PE investments: revenue growth went from 44% of value created in 2019 to 75% in 2025 while multiple expansion fell from 46% to 8%, and the fastest growers exit on multiples 30% to 70% higher.
Sovereign AI is an advantage.
AI built in Europe, on European compute, is a strategic advantage in its own right, and it is what capital markets increasingly want to buy from.
Sovereignty accelerates innovation
Gartner frames AI sovereignty as a way for regions to build strength and accelerate innovation rather than as a limitation to manage.
Value creation, underwritten
Gartner for Technology Investors arms the invest lifecycle with objective, decision-grade insight, the same reader Makers of New serves.
Underwriting now runs on evidence
Bain finds 2020 to 2022 tech buyouts tracking a 2.1x median gross multiple against 2.9x for the prior decade, and tells sponsors the exit story now has to arrive with measured AI results attached.
Living sources: Gain publishes the Global 400 and industry deep-dives; McKinsey the Global Private Markets Report; Gartner runs free webinars. Sources are theirs; the framing is ours.
Your Next Fund Is Priced on Your Record
Gain’s 2026 fundraising data prices the prior fund’s record: six months in market against fifteen, a 1.59x step-up against 1.33x, and what a readable evidence file is worth before the raise.
The Consultant and the Spreadsheet
The most dangerous competitor in value creation is not a platform. It is a trusted advisor and an Excel file named final_v7. What that costs, and what replaces it.
Sovereignty Is a Multiple
Europe now pays a premium for technology you own and run where a regulator can see it. Why sovereignty stopped being a compliance cost and became a re-rating.
Digital Transformation for PE Portfolio Companies in the Age of AI
Why digital is the decisive value-creation lever for private equity: the levers, the pitfalls, and how to get past them.
From Good to Great
Why digital maturity is what re-rates the multiple in private equity, and the five levers that move it.
Why Digital Is the Lever an Owner Still Controls
Beyond financial engineering: the four-stage digital roadmap from due diligence to self-disruption.
Digital Transformation: Efficiency or Transformation?
Why most programmes fail, and the difference between optimising the core and building a second engine.
RPA & the Next Step: Hyperautomation
Beyond RPA lies hyperautomation, but technology comes second. Business comes first. (EN · RO)
Fintech and the Financial Advisor
A contributed chapter to EFPA Luxembourg’s Digitalization Handbook, practitioners writing for practitioners: why transformation begins with the business and only then reaches the tool, and why standing still is the most expensive option of all.
Opportunity Is Searched For, Not Waited For
Drucker and Christensen, read against a valuation model. What survived the reading is eleven instruments a company can run on its own numbers, including the scan for the unexpected success nobody investigated.
The Age of Innovation
How a Romanian, from Luxembourg, leads the digital strategy of a 200-year-old industrial giant. English translation. (EN · RO)
The Most Innovative AI Leader Transforming the Future
Cover feature: championing digital transformation with strategy, innovation and action.
RPA: the essential performance lever (Lombard International)
The Lombard International RPA transformation: operational performance through automation (in French).
A Romanian inside the IT operations of global giants
Career interview: from AB InBev and JDE to wealth management in Luxembourg (in Romanian).
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