Much of my professional work involves helping established companies find new opportunities for growth, and then working with them to see whether those opportunities can become real businesses.
It's a mix of strategy, commercial investigation, venture development and getting the right people involved. The work can start with a big question about the future of an industry and end up somewhere considerably more practical: customers, partners, business models, teams and things that need building.
I currently do much of this work through Limineer, alongside a team of builders, engineers and specialists working across different sectors.
Established companies often have considerable advantages when it comes to building new businesses: expertise, assets, customer relationships, technical capabilities and capital.
What they don't always have is a straightforward way to turn those advantages into something new.
An interesting idea can spend months circulating between departments without ever getting close enough to a customer to find out whether it has legs.
My work sits in that gap between identifying an opportunity and doing something about it.
Finding the opportunity
Working with leadership and innovation teams to explore new markets, customer needs, business models and opportunities beyond the core business.
This means research and analysis, certainly, but also challenging assumptions, looking outside the organisation and asking questions that might not have obvious answers.
Testing whether it works
An attractive opportunity on paper isn't necessarily a viable business.
I work with teams to test the commercial logic, speak to potential customers and partners, understand what people might actually pay for, and identify the assumptions that matter most.
The objective is to make better decisions with evidence rather than enthusiasm alone.
Building around it
A good idea rarely succeeds in isolation.
That might mean finding a commercial partner, bringing in an expert, helping a team work through a difficult decision, or getting people from different parts of an organisation working towards the same outcome.
Getting it into the world
I'm most interested in the point where strategy stops being theoretical.
Depending on the venture, that can mean developing a go-to-market approach, shaping the proposition, supporting business development or working directly with the people responsible for taking it forward.
The goal isn't simply to produce a convincing recommendation. It's to give something promising a genuine chance of becoming a business.
