The 9 Vectors
A complete model of a business.
Nine vectors, 37 Sub-Vectors and 571 themes. First published in two books in 2011 and 2012, and now the reference framework that ships inside TheGreyMatter.ai.
The nine vectors
Assets
Market, People, Finance — what the business has to work with.
Processes
Strategy, Operations, Execution — how the business turns those assets into results.
Structures
Expectations, Governance, Entity — the frame the business runs inside.
Read down the columns. At the center of the grid sits Operations — the point where every vector meets, and the point the (i)Sage symbol lights in orange.
In software
From the page to the platform.
The 9 Vectors is the ontology inside TheGreyMatter.ai — the business context layer for agentic AI. A causal knowledge graph built on the framework sits beneath 20 applications and 32 agentic AI agents spanning diligence, integration, exit readiness, forecasting, risk, organization design, succession and board reporting.
A fine-tuned domain model classifies against the 9 Vectors ontology at 96.5% accuracy, against 66.5% for frontier models. Operators, sponsors and advisors bring their own frameworks and build their own context layer on top.
Protected
The 9 Vectors schema is protected by copyright through its published books; the method is protected by U.S. Patent 9,489,419 B2. Intellectual property →
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