Advisory work based on my research

Most strategic advice is built on average behaviour. The hardest decisions are often the ones where averages mislead, and that is where my research is most useful.

The questions I can help with are specific. How internationalising firms should read signals in digital markets, where a claim that costs nothing to make is judged by its audience. How policymakers should read the effect of poor information on entrepreneurs, when fear no longer follows the evidence. How organisations should assess claims about their own technology change, and other people’s. When leaving a market is a planned step and when it is a defeat. And whether a scheme for under-represented founders actually reaches them.

What I can offer that a consultancy cannot is a clear view of where the evidence is strong, where it is disputed, and where a confident-sounding framework has no evidence behind it. The third is often the most useful to know. The research stories set out the evidence in each area, including what is still uncertain.

I take a small number of engagements at a time and decline those where a conclusion is expected in advance. Where the evidence is thin or points the other way, that is what the report will say. Faculty consulting at Aston operates under institutional disclosure requirements and contractual limits on time, which I will set out before any engagement begins.