What can you expect when working with us? – we are great believers in the social and economic importance of new knowledge production, of the solution, the creative solution to apparently intractable problems, see it as vital to our futures, in fact. Of course, it tends to be under-produced in market places and leaves a critical role for public interventions in research which makes ERC and the FPs far more important, we think, than they are often given credit for. And, so, the one thing you’ll get from working with us is full engagement and enthusiasm for this really important venture – if we can strike a deal to partner up in collaboration then we are ‘in for a penny, in for a pound’ (which, is, of course, a rather old fashioned expression even to our UK readers…) and you can trust us to stay with you until the end.

Add to that our client-centric approach and you get a sense, we hope, of the close and dynamic relation that we tend to strike our research clients. By client-centric, we simply mean that we work at the pace and to the rhythm of the researcher which is different in each case. We know precisely where we need to end up and will make sure we get there but put the needs to client first and foremost – we can work on full drafts, on tiny fragments of a puzzle that comes together at the last moment, we can work last minute or well in advance of the deadline and always keep our cool…almost…

What is a common mistake that researchers make in, for example, ERC proposals? Researchers are good on what they are going to do and even, quite often, on what they are going to have made at the end of the work i.e., the results. But, far too often, they don’t tackle the bit that sells and makes a difference and that is the changes and effects and they are expressed through the objectives statements – it is avoiding the promises for verifiable change in the field that is the most common mistake. We understand why that is the case, of course, as it demands that the researcher put their ‘head above the parapet’ and most of the time that is something that they pretty strenuously avoid doing in particular if they are younger researchers. But, that is what we have to do to win.

How do we fix this important problem? We help researchers overcome this tendency to avoid the crucial middle part of the presentation by, firstly explaining what objectives are, how to write them and how they need to be focused and carefully contextualised as strong promises of change that are feasible avoiding the ‘high risk/high gain’ rhetoric that surrounds the call and means people get stuck in the middle and make vague gestures of vast change rather than promises of focused, feasible and fruitful effects that will move the field forwards.

Clients we thing are a good fit for our work – it boils down to a willingness to rethink assumptions and focus down on promising to make changes to the field rather than simply promising to do more work or fill a gap or make up for a ‘lack of’ activity in a particular area. We get along best with those who really want to win, think it possible and are willing to think and really engage with promising change rather than process and in new ways to make a compelling pitch in a very competitive environment.

What sets us aside from others in this consulting field? Here we can only go on what other researchers tell us about their unsatisfactory experiences with other advisors. We are told that researchers like the fact that we work at their pace rather than the consultant’s pace and milestones and deadlines. They also like that we don’t work on contingency fees and demand large cuts of any project funding in future – this we think is probably illegal anyway and would lead any consultant only to work with those who will very likely win with very minimal input which would make it very, very uninteresting work to do. We are told that we don’t watch the clock like other companies do…yes, this can lead to over runs on our side, but, we just suck it up as a bad guess on our part. We don’t pretend to be subject experts whereas some other teams seem to think they can field topic expertise – our view is simply that as the work proposed needs to be leading edge then only full time researchers will be on that margin and then that would make for bad consulting as the skills are equally complex or a full time consultant who might offer out of date expertise on very hot and emerging field knowledge. We are also told that we tend to be cheaper than other consultants and, in particular, we are a friction-free company to work with – often working under blanket confidentiality and verbal agreement with trusted clients to avoid complex contracting processes and happy to sign NDAs as necessary without any delay. We set out to make the whole process as simple and quick as possible so that we can get down to the work.

What does our work produce? In a nutshell, a proposal that is as competitive as we can make it together – the researcher/research team bringing in all the latest ideas and methods and problems and our work to forge it into a document that we know that they will have to take seriously in the evaluation. So, the result will be a complete and stress-tested proposition which has been subjected to line-by-line scrutiny and discussion through a number of iterations and drafts.