Strategic intelligence for the agentic age
FAS Research is a strategic intelligence firm for leaders who need to achieve consequential outcomes across organizational boundaries. We make power and influence visible, build the relationships and coalitions required to act, and create decision environments for consequential situations.
Trusted where decisions have consequences
The strategic risk
Organizations rarely fail for lack of information. They fail because they misread who decides, where influence flows, which relationships create leverage and what it takes to earn a place at the table.
A strategy can be analytically right — and still socially impossible.
It survives contact only when evidence, relationships, resources and human judgment are read together.
Every consequential objective sits in a field of forces. Some open the way. Others redirect, slow or block movement. We make those influences visible and identify a viable path to the desired outcome.
When leaders call FAS Research
Map power in stakeholder ecosystems. Design engagement and influence strategies. Create shared situational intelligence for consequential action.
When it mattersFormal structures do not reveal who can enable, block or move the outcome.
What changesPower becomes visible: the ecosystem, its centers of influence, leverage points and consequential actors come into view.
When it mattersChange depends on relationships, legitimacy and influence beyond your direct control.
What changesEngagement becomes strategic: whom to involve, in which sequence, through which relationships and around what shared value becomes clear.
When it mattersA consequential situation must be understood and moved with the people who shape it — especially when perspectives are fragmented, key stakeholders are absent or coordinated action is difficult.
What changesThe situation becomes actionable: a shared reading, clear priorities and a mandate for coordinated action with explicit ownership.Explore Situation R →
Leaders bring judgment and tacit knowledge. Stakeholders bring interests and lived experience. Synthetic agents widen the field and test possible reactions. Their interaction creates one workable reading while important differences remain visible.
A representative engagement
Map the forces, relationships and conditions that shape the result.
Distinguish what matters from what the organization can realistically influence.
Prioritize the actors, commitments and next moves that can change the outcome.
We identify where forces reinforce, redirect or constrain one another — and trace a viable move through the field.
A shared map of the field, a prioritized engagement agenda and clear next moves.
Attention shifts from the most visible stakeholders to the relationships and commitments with the greatest leverage.
The agentic shift
Human-to-human, human-to-agent and agent-to-agent relationships now shape the same consequential situations. Synthetic agents are here to stay. The strategic task is to operate across these relationships without losing human agency, shared reality or accountability.
Roles and boundaries must be explicit: what agents may explore, represent or simulate — and where human judgment, responsibility and decision authority remain non-delegable.
Organizations can metabolize reality only when people can process it together. Hybrid spaces need relationships that keep disagreement speakable, trust usable and coordinated action possible under uncertainty.
Every stakeholder journey has a sequence: reading the field, building respect, earning a place at the table and creating the conditions for humans and agents to contribute without confusing participation with authority.
The advantage will not belong to organizations with the most agents. It will belong to those that can metabolize reality together — preserving human agency while combining judgment, synthetic perspectives and relationships strong enough to carry action.
A FAS Research Situational Intelligence Platform
R / ROOM is the facilitated, agent-supported platform in which human judgment, stakeholder perspectives and synthetic-agent readings become shared situational intelligence through Read, Relate and Respond.
Reveal the forces, actors and relationships shaping the outcome.
Connect what matters with the perspectives, dependencies and capacities that can move it.
Turn the shared reading into a mandate, owned commitments and coordinated action.
Synthetic agents add absent perspectives, challenge assumptions and rehearse possible reactions. They widen the field without replacing human authority.
Explore Situation R →The FAS Research story
FAS Research has evolved through three connected fields of practice — each one extending how leaders can read reality and act within it.
Founded in Vienna as a University of Vienna spin-off, FAS Research pioneered applied social network analysis for strategic decisions.
Resilience science and robust decision-making expanded the work. Early Situation Rooms created shared, real-time readings of consequential situations.
Situation R brings human judgment, stakeholder perspectives and synthetic agents together to create shared situational intelligence.
Hundreds of mandates across pharma and life sciences, finance, energy, innovation policy, urban and brownfield development, and the non-profit and social sectors.
A guiding principle since 1995
Leadership is a capacity for reality.
For three decades, this principle has meant three things: see what matters, bring teams and stakeholders into a shared understanding, and build a mandate that holds through implementation.
Harald Katzmair
Founder & Director, FAS Research
FAS Research
Harald founded FAS Research in 1995 as a spin-off of the University of Vienna. Trained in economics, sociology and philosophy, he has spent three decades translating network science, resilience research and strategic decision-making into practice.
He advises corporations, foundations and public institutions on the structural conditions of decision-making — who decides, who influences and what remains viable when the ground shifts. Today, he leads FAS Research’s transition into the agentic age.
Father of two. Classical music, landscape photography and ornithology are the slow practices that sharpen his eye for pattern, depth and what others miss.
Valerie studied at the Vienna University of Economics and Business and the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna. Before joining FAS Research, she worked in investor relations and corporate communications.
She leads operations, business development and strategic advisory mandates across corporate, public and civil-society contexts. Her work connects stakeholder analysis, engagement design and strategy facilitation with actionable recommendations.
Cristian is a sociologist and data scientist whose work spans statistics, large-scale data analysis and applied network research. He has shaped the analytical foundation of hundreds of FAS Research projects.
He leads data collection and analysis and advances the firm’s use of new analytical technologies. His scientific publications and university teaching connect methodological rigor with practical innovation.
Start with the situation
Bring one consequential situation. In a focused first conversation, we clarify the actors, dependencies and questions that determine what happens next — and whether FAS is the right partner.
FAS Research
Porzellangasse 2/34
1090 Vienna · Austria
+43 1 319 2655 0
office@fas-research.com