Led academic departments. Held £2.5m+ in innovation grants. Shipped spinout products that lasted nearly a decade. Coached academic founders into startup leaders. We don't advise from the outside what we've not done from the inside.
Held senior academic posts and led doctoral-level research, including active NIHR-funded studies.
NIHR and Innovate UK included. We understand how grants work from the inside — timelines, compliance, reporting.
Products live in the health space for nearly a decade — not pilots that disappeared when the grant ended.
The PI-to-CEO transition is a specific challenge. We've navigated it ourselves, and we coach others through it.
The science is publishable and the technology works — but the gap between "we have IP" and "we have a venture that survives the market" is enormous, and most internal university structures aren't designed to close it quickly.
Ethics-committee timelines, procurement, competing departmental priorities. For a 12-month innovation grant, internal timelines frequently become the biggest risk to delivery. The expertise is real; the pace is the problem.
Academic-depth credentials and NIHR grant experience — without the institutional overhead. As an external consultancy we move immediately on innovation funding, working alongside your internal teams rather than against them. We've moved from first conversation to active delivery in two weeks.
Internal procurement, ethics approval and departmental negotiation can consume three to six months of a 12-month grant before any work begins. We contract quickly, assemble the right team fast, and begin delivery immediately — academically credible alongside you, structurally free of the system.
We conduct market validation, user interviews and demand testing without requiring your institution's ethical approval — removing the most common timeline blocker. Where retrospective data analysis needs ethics, we build the framework in with the university named as research partner. Rigour when you need it, speed when you don't.
Group Works had tried to move their digital innovation forward for years. Within four months of engaging UXC, the picture had changed completely.
UXC embedded. Founder-readiness read and product-hypothesis review completed — a clear picture of what had been blocking progress.
First version built and tested. Market-validation research conducted with no ethics delay, as an external consultancy.
Validation data shaping the first full release, while the academic team is coached into startup leadership and market positioning.
Complete product ready for market entry. Team equipped with commercial strategy, a startup mindset and an investor-ready narrative. "All the ingredients were there — we just added the secret sauce."
REF-eligible academic outputs and investor-grade traction proof, generated from the same engagement — 22 co-published papers between 2015 and 2026 show what co-authorship looks like when it's built into the work.
Mixed-methods evaluation written for the journal that fits the work, co-authored with the academic team — built into the contract, not bolted on.
The same evaluation, restructured around the questions investors actually ask — adherence, unit economics, deployment risk, founder readiness. One report, two narratives.
Each shape has a clear length, cadence and output. Pricing is bespoke and shared in the discovery call.
Embedded support for a single spinout from IP to investable — coaching, product strategy, team development and dual-purpose evidence.
Accelerator for academic founders pre-spinout. Builds founder capability before the venture decision is made.
1:1 coaching for the academic-to-CEO transition. Doctoral-depth, sprint-cadenced, fitted around teaching and lab life.
Long-term partnership with an innovation hub or TTO — UXC as the founder-development arm of the hub.
Co-authored peer-reviewed work coming out of accelerator engagements. Publishable, written together, REF-eligible.
Thirty minutes to map the venture, the founder and the grant window — with a written read within 48 hours, whether or not we work together.
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