National AI Strategy Sprint

Course lesson · Lesson 3

Constraints, Leapfrogging, and Realistic Budgets

Practice strategy under real limits — power, compute, talent, donor dependence, political time — by finding the one binding constraint and sequencing everything else around it.

What you'll take away
  • Identify the single binding constraint that, unaddressed, makes everything else impossible.
  • Sequence a strategy outward from that constraint rather than pretending it away.
  • Explain leapfrogging as a sequencing decision enabled by shared digital rails, not a spending decision.
  • Turn a constraint analysis into honest budget logic — what gets funded first, and why.

This lesson is part of the full course

Lesson 1 is free to preview. Enroll to unlock all 6 lessons, the workbook, the facilitator guide, and downloadable readings.

Resources
  • Optional deep dive: constraints and leapfrogging readingreading
  • Optional deep dive: constraints and leapfrogging exerciseexercise