There is almost always another way to see.

Much of Ihsan's work begins with a suspicion: the situation in front of us may not be the only way the situation can be understood.

People inherit categories. Organizations inherit assumptions. Industries inherit conventions. Societies inherit definitions of what is normal. Eventually, interpretations can become so familiar that they stop looking like interpretations. They begin looking like reality.

Ihsan is interested in that boundary: between what exists and how we have learned to see what exists.

Ihsan's academic work sits at the intersection of entrepreneurship, organizations, strategy, and social theory. His research examines how people and organizations are categorized, interpreted, and granted - or denied - legitimacy.

He is completing doctoral research on how investors judge the people behind companies, and develops his scholarship at Thought Architecture, the research home.

Ihsan has spent substantial parts of his life building businesses as well as studying entrepreneurship. That experience creates another vantage point on many of the same questions: how entrepreneurs notice opportunities other people overlook, why certain ideas immediately make sense while others initially appear strange, how categories influence markets, and how much of a business begins with the entrepreneur's interpretation of reality.

Research and entrepreneurship are not separate parts of the work. They are two ways of examining many of the same questions.

The same intellectual territory informs Ihsan's advisory work. Through IHSAN Advisory, he independently examines consequential institutional decisions and the environments surrounding them. Through The Quiet Advisory, he works privately with individuals navigating consequential professional and personal decisions.

In both cases, the central question often appears before strategy: are we sure we are seeing the situation correctly?