About Apophenic Labs
Three practitioners asking hard questions about how organisations work
Apophenic Labs is a research collective founded by Mal Wanstall, Dan M, and Jase Y — three people who've spent their careers building, deploying, and fixing enterprise technology and strategy from the inside.
We started Labs because we kept seeing the same problems across different organisations, different industries, and different scales — and the public conversation about strategy, AI, and organisational change wasn't matching what we were seeing in practice. Too much theory. Not enough honest analysis of what actually happens when companies try to change.
Everything we publish here comes from direct observation, real engagements, and original analysis. No thought-leadership-by-buzzword. No repackaged conventional wisdom.
What we're interested in
How strategy actually survives contact with an organisation. How emerging technology reshapes what's possible and what fails. And the persistent, structural gaps between what leaders intend and what their organisations actually do.
The researchers
MW
Mal Wanstall
Strategy · Enterprise AI · Methodology
VP of AI and Data at Cochlear. Previously led digital transformation at Westpac. Built Clark, Cochlear's enterprise AI assistant. Thinks about what happens to strategic intent after it leaves the boardroom — and why the answer is usually "nothing good."
Research focus
Strategy translationEnterprise AIOrganisational diagnostics
DM
Dan M
AI/ML Systems · Platform Architecture · Data Engineering
Deep technical background in AI/ML systems, data engineering, and platform architecture. Interested in the gap between what AI can do in a demo and what it can do inside a real organisation — and the engineering choices that determine which side you end up on.
Research focus
AI architectureDeterministic pipelinesEnterprise deployment
JY
Jase Y
Operations · Commercial Strategy · Delivery
Operational experience across enterprise technology and consulting delivery. Focuses on the mechanics of how strategic decisions become (or fail to become) operational reality — the handoffs, the dependencies, the places where elegant plans meet messy execution.
Research focus
Operational fidelityDelivery scienceGo-to-market