Arbolus: Making human knowledge digital

Sam Glasswell and Will Leeming, co-founders and co-CEOs of Arbolus, were getting ready to board their usual flight from London to Barcelona to meet with the company's CTO, Pau Beltran. This meeting at Arbolus headquarters was bound to be different. Together with Pau, Sam and Will would have to formulate the company's strategy for their niche digital product, Arbolus Canopy. Arbolus, a relatively new player in the expert network space, presented itself as a "knowledge sharing platform that investors and advisors use to gather more insights from the best experts in less time" (company literature). Arbolus Canopy was a new AI-powered digital product that would enable new kinds of asynchronous interactions between clients and experts. This was very different from the current conventional offering of so-called 'expert networks', which primarily facilitated synchronous interactions ('calls'). While Sam and Will were proud of Arbolus' rapid growth and new product development efforts, they were puzzled by the different possibilities that Arbolus Canopy presented. Should Arbolus Canopy take center stage as the flagship product, embodying a unique selling point that could not be ignored? Or could it shine as a complementary tool, seamlessly integrated with traditional expert interviews to deepen and enrich client insights? The duo found themselves at a strategic crossroads, weighing the appeal of these divergent paths.