Etym.from Old English for riding equipment, later co-opted by 20th-century management literature to imply applied control, see F. L. Grantham, Corporate Terminology, 1998.

To harness means to announce appropriation of an external technology or trend as a managerial mandate, thereby justifying budget shifts and deflecting specific deliverables.

'We will harness generative models to unlock synergies across customer touchpoints' - Q3 Board Deck, slide 47

Etym.from Gk. oikos, house, and systema, arrangement, popularized in corporate vernacular during the early 2010s by a branding consultant seeking scale legitimacy, see Hartwell, Corporate Verisimilitude, 2013.

A rhetorical container that bundles unrelated products, partners, and users into a single market narrative to inflate scope and defer difficult decisions.

'We are building an open ecosystem to accelerate partnerships and monetization' - CEO keynote, Q2 Partner Summit

Etym.from Old French aligner, later anglicized as align and repurposed in Silicon Valley circa 2014 by a strategy consultant who needed a softer synonym for compliance, see R. Hargrove, 'Terms for Transformation,' 2016.

A rhetorical maneuver that professes shared priorities to postpone substantive decisions and shift accountability into future milestones.

'Can everyone confirm shared priorities by EOD' - Proceedings of the 2019 All-Hands Meeting