A commercial operating system
A durable way of thinking about value and decisions that complements your technical depth.
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Foundations / Eight-week cohort
Ascent
Build the commercial mind to match your technical depth.
Ascent is for ambitious scientists who want more than technical excellence. Over eight weeks you build the commercial instinct, leadership identity, and entrepreneurial mindset to take your career in any direction.
The starting point
For scientists who suspect they were built to lead.
Technical brilliance gets you respected. It does not, on its own, get you a seat at the table where decisions are made. Ascent is for scientists who feel that gap and want to close it, not by abandoning the science, but by adding the commercial and leadership capability that lets them shape what happens to it.
- Postdocs and PIs who sense they could lead, not just contribute
- Scientists drawn to industry, founding, or investing but unsure how to begin
- Group leaders who want to run their lab with a commercial mindset
- Researchers who never realised an entrepreneurial path was open to them
What happens
What we build, week by week.
Eight weeks that develop the person, not a project. You leave with capability you carry into whatever you do next.
- Weeks 1-2Commercial instinctHow value, markets, and money actually work, in language that respects you
- Weeks 3-4The leader you areA leadership identity that fits a scientist, not a caricature of one
- Week 5Reading opportunitySpotting where your expertise creates leverage in the real world
- Week 6Influence and peopleStakeholders, negotiation, and getting things done through others
- Week 7Strategy and decisionsThinking in bets, trade-offs, and direction under uncertainty
- Week 8Your directionIndustry, start-up, or a sharper academic group: a concrete next move
What you leave with
What you leave with.
Not a certificate. A different sense of what you are capable of, and the tools to act on it.
A leadership identity
A version of leadership that fits who you are, not a borrowed corporate template.
A peer network
A cohort of equally ambitious scientists who become a network that outlasts the programme.
A direction and first moves
Clarity on the path you want, and the specific steps that start you down it.
For institutions
Develop the leaders your research base already has.
Your most ambitious scientists are also your most likely to leave, or to stay and never reach their potential. Ascent gives them a reason to grow with you.
- Runs as an eight-week cohort for 12 to 16 of your most ambitious researchers
- Part-time and remote-friendly, so it fits alongside active research
- Develops the research leaders and founders of the future
- A powerful retention and development offer for your strongest talent
- Complements technical training; it builds the commercial half they never got
- Led by a scientist who built a commercial career
We run Ascent with universities, research institutes, and doctoral training programmes developing their next generation of research leaders.
Bring Ascent to your scientists.
Tell us about the researchers you want to develop into leaders, and we will propose a cohort.