Advisory work follows from the research

Most strategic advice generalises from average behaviour. The decisions that matter most are precisely where averages mislead, and that is the terrain this research covers.

The questions I am equipped to answer are specific. How internationalising firms should read signals in digitally mediated markets, where a claim that costs nothing to produce is priced by the audience or not priced at all. How policymakers should interpret the entrepreneurial consequences of degraded information environments, where fear stops tracking evidence. How organisations should assess claims about their own technological transformation, and about everyone else's. When a withdrawal from a market is orchestration rather than defeat. And whether a scheme designed for under-represented founders actually reaches them, which is a question about participation rather than provision.

What I can offer that a consultancy cannot is the ability to say where the evidence is strong, where it is contested, and where a confident-sounding framework rests on nothing. Most of the value sits in that third category. The research stories carry the evidence behind each of these areas, including what remains unsettled; there is no separate case for expertise to make here.

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.