Source hierarchy
Each framework entry is built from primary sources where possible. A primary source is the original paper, book, company case, or recorded talk in which the framework was introduced or first formalized — for example, Heinz Weihrich's 1982 Long Range Planning article for the TOWS extension of SWOT, or Sean Murphy and Sean Ellis's published writing on the North Star metric. When a primary source is unavailable or unverifiable, we use the highest-quality secondary source we can identify and label it as such.
We do not cite anonymous "industry studies." We do not link to listicles as if they were sources. When a number appears in an entry — a benchmark, a percentage, a market size — it is traceable to a named publication, dataset, or company filing. If a claim cannot be sourced, the claim is removed.
How entries are written
Every framework entry follows the same eight-section template: What it is, Origin, When to use it, When not to use it, How to apply it, Worked example, Common mistakes, and Related concepts. The template exists so that readers can move quickly between entries without re-learning the layout, and so that contributors cannot quietly skip the harder sections — When not to use it and Common mistakes are the hardest to write and the most useful when done well.
Worked examples use specific numbers in fictional companies. The companies are invented; the numbers are chosen to make the framework's logic visible. We do not attribute fabricated quotes to real companies, executives, or institutions.
Editorial review
A draft passes a checklist before publication: every external claim has a citation, the worked example carries through a single specific scenario, the related-concepts list points only to entries that exist in the library, and the FAQ answers are written so they can be quoted in isolation without losing meaning. A second contributor reviews the draft against the checklist and signs off in the page's review log.
Update cadence
Entries are reviewed at minimum once every twelve months. They are reviewed sooner when a meaningful new primary source surfaces, when the framework's standard interpretation has shifted in practice, or when a reader-submitted correction requires it. Each entry shows its Updated date in the byline; substantive changes advance that date and are summarized in the page's history when published.
Corrections and disputes
Corrections are welcomed. If a citation is wrong, if a framework has been misattributed, or if a worked example contains an arithmetic error, send the specifics to the editorial team via the contact page. We log corrections in the page history with the date and a one-line description of what changed.
Where a framework has a contested origin or interpretation, we describe the dispute rather than silently picking a side. Readers who want to dig deeper should be able to follow the citations from our summary back to the original arguments.
What the library will not do
No fabricated statistics. No invented credentials. No paid placement disguised as editorial. No anonymous trend pieces. No framework summarized purely from another secondary source without going back to the primary. These constraints exist because the value of a reference library collapses the moment any one of them is broken.