The Method in Six Moves — Excerpt

Editorial note

This is not a book about AI.

Books about artificial intelligence describe what the machine can do. This excerpt addresses the opposite problem: what AI does to the judgment of the person using it. Generative models are trained to please. Those who decide with their help receive confirmation, not rebuttal — and confirmation, repeated, atrophies judgment.

The antidote is not to distrust the machine: it is to design it as an adversary. The six moves that follow are the operational part of the essay — the part you can use on Monday morning, in a meeting, with no preliminary theory.

One necessary caveat: the Δ-CSI cited in these pages is a proposed metric. It measures the intensity of the challenge to a decision, not the quality of the decision itself.

Contents

The six moves, in order of application.

From the unspoken premise to the declared source.

Implicit assumptions

The premises no one examines, because they disguise themselves as facts. How to surface them with four mechanical questions.

First move

The counter-intuitive scenario

Forcing reasoning down the road it would rather avoid: the pre-mortem and the 2-4-6 game.

Second move

III

Falsification tests

Don't look for confirmation: design the test that, if it fails, dismantles the decision. And let it be designed by someone who doesn't gain from the signature.

Third move

The burden of proof

Who must prove what. The reversal that saved — and the one that failed to save — famous decisions.

Fourth move

Calibrated confidence

"Certain" is not a probability. How to write an estimate a reader can actually weigh.

Fifth move

Declared sources

Every claim carries its own provenance — or it does not count as the premise of a decision.

Sixth move

Francesco Saverio Canepa - editorial portrait, M&A Advisor

The author

Twenty years protecting value — not narrating it.

Francesco Saverio Canepa is an independent M&A advisor with twenty years of practice and over eighty extraordinary finance transactions managed. He operates through a bilateral Italy–USA structure: personal mandates, a contained number of active dossiers (five to ten simultaneously), long-term relationships measured in years. He has assisted foreign institutional investors entering the Italian market, supported listed SMEs accessing alternative capital instruments (equity commitment facilities, put options), held independent director roles in large-cap and AIM listed companies, and participated directly in industrial rescue operations — including, not least, that of the historic Italian brand Borsalino. He has published six volumes on extraordinary finance and venture capital, distributed in Italian and English on Amazon Italy and USA. His practice is dedicated to the Italian mid-market and to cross-border transactions between Europe and the United States, with particular focus on special situations, NPLs and the integration of generative artificial intelligence into M&A processes.

The material in these pages was not theorized: it was observed at the table, in data rooms, in boardrooms, in the closed-door meetings where the deal is actually decided. — From the Preface

More details on professional profile, selected track record and other publications.

20+

Years of practice

80+

Transactions managed

15+

Years longest mandate

5–10

Active dossiers

The method in six moves.