Bird-in-hand sales architecture — start from GC's existing assets, propose bounded incremental improvements; NOT strategic reinvention

Claim (applied inference): A pitch that starts from the GC's existing assets — his current website, his existing crew, his current client list, the work he is already doing — and proposes incremental, bounded improvements is structurally aligned with Sarasvathy's bird-in-hand principle ([[sarasvathy-effectuation-bird-in-hand-affordable-loss]]).

A pitch that proposes strategic reinvention — "let's reposition you in the market" — violates bird-in-hand and triggers the loss-domain value function over a large reference-point shift. The bird-in-hand architecture is the architecture the expert-entrepreneur decision rule was empirically built around.

Confidence: Applied inference from effectuation literature.

For Candid:

• Default architecture (most GCs, owner-operators, lifestyle businesses): bird-in-hand. Begin with what they have; surface what is broken or under-leveraged; propose bounded fixes.
• Exception (growth-oriented founder-GCs — see [[stewart-roth-2001-entrepreneur-risk-propensity-contested]]): strategic-reinvention pitches can land. This is a small segment.

Operationalized as: [[rule-bird-in-hand-pitch-architecture-default]].