Case studies
Each piece of work here began with a question a client could not yet answer. We set out the question, what we did and what was different afterwards, so you can see whether yours is one we have met before.
Venture and innovation
With investors, institutions and founders, in technology and telecommunications.
Launching a corporate venture arm
How does a telecommunications group start investing in the start-ups that may reshape its market?
What we did
We helped launch GO Ventures, the corporate venture arm of a telecommunications group in Malta. We set up how it finds and judges new ventures, and sat alongside it as it invested.
A deal flow engine for investors
An investor sees far more start-ups than any team can read. How do the right ones reach a person?
What we did
We built an engine that reads each start-up, scores it against the investor's own thesis and puts every score in front of a person, who makes the call.
What changed
Thousands of start-ups a year are read and scored, and none is set aside without a person seeing its score.
Investment and innovation inside a technology business
How does an established technology business invest in what comes next without first building a new team?
What we did
At BMIT, a data-centre and technology business in Malta, we run the investment and innovation programmes, including its AI initiatives. We designed the programmes, and we staff and run them.
Buying and selling businesses
A company wants to buy or sell a business. Who carries it from the first search to the close?
What we did
Corporate clients bring us in for the whole process, from finding the target through to the close.
Backing founders
How do deep-tech founders turn research into a company, and who backs them while they do?
What we did
We helped design and launch an accelerator programme for early-stage founders, and we advise deep-tech start-ups spinning out of a Canadian university.
Technology advisory
More recently, we have advised a telecommunications group on its technology, leading its technical teams.
We want more of this, with investors, institutions and founders in technology and telecommunications, from a first read of a market to a programme running inside a company.
Opportunities in venture and innovationStrategic foresight
With governments and organisations, planning for the futures they face.
Foresight as a standing practice in government
How does a government make thinking about the future part of its everyday work?
What we did
Across the UAE government, we built the soft infrastructure for strategic foresight: the tools, data, methods and indices, and the research capability behind them. We trained people to use them, found new foresight talent through a super-forecasting competition, and built a culture around the work with incentives and awards.
We also gathered children's ideas of the future and presented them to the country's leaders.
What changed
Foresight became a standing practice, with its own methods and people trained to use them, and new ministries followed in the areas the work had explored.
Scenarios for new economic sectors
Which new sectors could a national economy grow into, and what would each one need?
What we did
With government, universities and international organisations, we ran scenario exercises on geopolitics, space, climate, wellbeing and advanced technology. Each weighed the region's economy, its cultural attitudes to technology, and how public ambition and private innovation work together.
We also advised on the scientific objectives of a national space mission.
What changed
Senior leaders reached a shared view of each future, and the scenarios shaped strategies for new economic sectors.
A national technology strategy
Where should a government invest in fourth industrial revolution technologies, and on what terms?
What we did
We wrote the investment strategy for bringing advanced technology into government, with its ethics, sovereignty and effects on society addressed from the start, and reconciled the technical, economic and cultural views of the people it involved.
What changed
The strategy was carried into the government's long-term programmes, among them UAE Centennial 2071.
A fifty-year technology outlook
Over fifty years, how will AI, automation and digital platforms change the way an economy and a society are organised?
What we did
We wrote a long-range national outlook, analysing how these technologies restructure economic and social relationships.
What changed
The outlook was used across government to raise awareness and consult on policy. It became a series of publications and informed the decisions of senior leadership.
Research and dialogue
What does a government need to know about the world before it plans for its own future?
What we did
We ran a Delphi study on the future of the world, built a future readiness index and published 100 global trends for 2040. We also design debates and dialogues on technological futures, and co-author research that feeds our scenario exercises.
What changed
Thinking about the future became a conversation across the whole of government. For the fifty-year outlook alone, hundreds of people across government analysed, debated and wrote their own parts of the long-term picture.
The same craft now goes into the design and governance of digital infrastructure: accountable AI, collaborative digital resources and data sovereignty.
Opportunities in strategic foresight