A working map
A clear picture of how science travels from the bench into the real world.
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Foundations / Half day
First Principles
How science actually becomes useful, from the ground up.
Most scientists are never shown how research reaches the real world. First Principles is a ground-up primer on exactly that, and where you could fit. No idea of your own required.
The starting point
For scientists who were never shown how the system works.
Nobody hands you a map. You learn to run experiments and write papers, and the entire machinery that turns research into impact stays invisible. First Principles makes it visible. It is not about your idea, because you may not have one yet. It is about understanding the landscape well enough to know where you might want to go.
- PhD students and postdocs curious about life beyond the paper
- Researchers unsure whether translation is even for them
- Groups and departments wanting a shared commercial vocabulary
- Anyone who senses there is a world past the lab and wants the map
What happens
What we cover.
Half a day to replace a decade of not knowing what you did not know. Six plain-language passes through the world your research lives in.
- 01How value is madeWhat it actually means for research to become useful to someone
- 02The routes out of the labIndustry, licensing, spin-outs, policy, and how each really works
- 03Who the players areTech transfer, investors, partners, and what each one wants
- 04How money movesWhere funding comes from, and why people back what they back
- 05Reading your own workSpotting the real-world relevance hiding in your research
- 06Where you could fitThe paths open to you, and how to take a first step
What you leave with
What you leave with.
Not a business plan. A new way of seeing your own work, and the confidence that there is a path if you want one.
The routes, demystified
An honest view of every path out of the lab, and what each one demands.
A shared language
The vocabulary to talk to investors, partners, and industry without feeling lost.
A first step
Permission to take your work further, and a concrete place to begin.
For institutions
Raise the commercial ambition of a whole research base.
Translation does not start with a spin-out. It starts with researchers understanding that their work could matter beyond the literature. First Principles plants that idea early and broadly.
- Runs as an open half-day session for a department or cohort
- Flat per-session pricing; the more researchers in the room, the better
- Builds baseline commercial literacy long before anyone has a spin-out
- Raises translation ambition early, a known knowledge-exchange goal
- The natural on-ramp to Ascent and the venture programmes
- Delivered by a working scientist, so the room engages
We run First Principles with doctoral training programmes, departments, and research institutions building commercial literacy at scale.
Bring First Principles to your researchers.
Tell us about your cohort or department, and we will propose a session and a flat price.