Maia’s (Intellectual) Architecture: Situated Entrepreneurial Coaching

The Opportunity: Closing the "Adoption Gap"

Traditional entrepreneurial training faces a well-documented "Adoption Gap." After multi-day courses teaching 20-30 new business practices, entrepreneurs typically implement only one or two. This leads to modest average profit gains of ~12.1% and leaves significant potential untapped. Maia is designed to close this gap, moving beyond one-time knowledge transfer to build lasting, high-impact habits through a continuous, AI-powered coaching cycle.

The Continuous Coaching Cycle

The architecture is a virtuous loop that turns insight into action and action into habit. It is powered by a dynamic, AI-driven core that builds an evolving profile of each entrepreneur and their business, ensuring every interaction is firmly based in their context and working towards their goals.

Stage 1: Personalized Insight (The Cue)

How it Works: Rather than only responding to inbound questions, the system proactively scans best practices including detailed country-specific knowledge bases, crosses them with the user’s situation and priorities, and proactively delivers new personalized ideas. These are single, targeted micro-insights framed as a simple "rules-of-thumb" to avoid cognitive overload. 

Basis:
- Heuristic-Based Training: Simplified rules have been shown to increase profits by 8.1% in microenterprises, proving more effective than complex training.
- Andragogy (Adult Learning Theory): Adults are motivated by solving immediate, real-world problems. This stage directly addresses their "need to know" and problem-centered orientation.

Stage 2: Action Plan & Asset (The Routine)

How it Works: It then co-creates a short low-effort action plan with "if-then" scenarios to form a clear implementation intention. Friction is minimized by providing accompanying ready-made digital assets when possible (e.g., templates, schedules, content) that makes the behavior easy to perform.

Basis:
- Fogg's Behavior Model (B=MAP): Lasting behavior change comes from maximizing Ability (making it easy), in addition to building Motivation and providing the prompt. 
- Situated Learning Theory (Lave & Wenger): Learning is most effective when it occurs in the context of application. Maia delivers the tool and the task directly into the entrepreneur's daily activities.

Stage 3: Guided Reflection & Reward

How it Works: Continuous structured follow-up prompts a supportive conversation to analyze results, learn from the experience, and celebrate the effort. This provides the immediate positive reinforcement that solidifies the actions as habits.

Basis:
- Personal Initiative (PI) Training: A focus on proactive mindset, error-learning, and opportunity-seeking has been shown to increase profits by 30%. The reflection stage is designed to coach this mindset
- Kolb's Experiential Learning Cycle: This stage operationalizes "Reflective Observation," the critical step where experience is transformed into durable knowledge.
- Duhigg's Habit Loop: The feeling of success and progress serves as the immediate "Reward" that tells the brain the entire loop is worth remembering and repeating.

Stage 4: Adjustment & Adaptation

How it Works: Insights from the reflection stage directly update the user's dynamic profile and inform the next cue. This ensures the next micro-insight is even more personalized, relevant, and impactful, creating a virtuous cycle of compounding gains.

Basis:
- High-Impact Consulting: The most effective entrepreneurial interventions evaluated in the literature are tailored and adaptive. Maia emulates this personalization at scale, a model proven to drive significant growth in SMEs.