A two-day workshop that helps scientists build economic agency, through consulting, licensing, open source, non-profits, and beyond. No MBA required.
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. But most businesses that win, win 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.
This module is in development.
This module is in development.
This module is in development.
This module is in development.
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.
Growth Medium is offered as a facilitated two-day workshop for Genomics Aotearoa researchers. Cohorts run August–October 2026. Maximum 20 participants per cohort.
Organisational Mycology also offers self-study access and can run this workshop for other research organisations on a fee-for-service basis.