A workshop that helps scientists build economic agency, through consulting, licensing, open source, non-profits, and beyond. Read the lessons openly, then join a cohort to run them live.
Three interlocking tiers, before, during, and after each session.
Short readings and case studies to complete before the session (~30 min per lesson). The live time is for thinking and doing, not lecturing.
Facilitated activities, roleplays, simulations, and discussions. Everything in the session ties directly to something you'll face in the real world.
Homework that produces something useful, a real strategic audit, a first draft, a decision. Brought to mentoring check-ins, not graded.
Two days. All materials openly licensed under CC-BY.
IP, licensing, competitive advantage, market sizing, and financial fundamentals.
Patents aren't the only moat. Learn when to protect, when to publish, and when to give it away-and why the choice might define your organisation's future.
IP protection feels like the responsible move when starting a new venture. But most businesses that succeed do so through execution, and protecting too early can actually slow you down. The truth is messier than either camp admits.
You spent years becoming one of the most rigorous thinkers on the planet. That training is worth far more outside academia than the job market suggests. The question isn't whether you have something to offer. It's whether you can see it.
IP is one kind of moat. Execution speed is another. But the most durable researcher-founded ventures are usually protected by something harder to name and much harder to copy.
There are more ways to build a viable business from scientific expertise than most researchers have been shown. This lesson is a menu. You don't have to order everything. But you should at least read it before deciding what you want.
Jobs-to-be-done, revenue models, organisational structures, NZ case studies, and 90-day planning.
A market size is not a number you look up. In a small, dense research economy like Aotearoa's, it is a number you build yourself from evidence you can actually reach, and defend line by line.
A business model tells you how value gets created and paid for. It does not tell you what legal shape to build. Most researchers default to 'start a company' without ever seeing the other seven options on the table.
Venture capital is only one funding option among many, and freedom to operate is a different question from who owns your IP. Both get conflated constantly, and both decisions are much harder to undo than they look at the time.
You now have a moat map, a business model shortlist, a market number, a structure, and a funding stance. This lesson is where those five sketches become one plan and one first move.
Every session includes at least one hands-on activity. Here's what's in the curriculum.
A facilitated 60-minute discussion that moves from surfacing assumptions about IP, through the IBM and Theranos cases, to participants mapping their own work and naming the decision they've been avoiding.
An interactive canvas for mapping customer segments, value propositions, channels, and revenue streams, adapted for research-based ventures.
A decision-tree tool that matches your goals, risk tolerance, and values to the right organisational model, for-profit, non-profit, hybrid, co-op, or open source.
Run the workshop live with a facilitated cohort. Cohorts are announced per region and community; sign up to be notified when the next one opens.
Prefer self-paced? Get in touch for self-study access.