Innovation decisions, made with startup discipline
Whether you’re fixing something inside your organisation, or spinning out new solutions: evidence comes before implementation. Start with deeply understanding the problem, test the riskiest assumptions early, and know exactly when to back a bet, and when to kill it.
This is where most of my last 17 years has been spent, and where most of Lumni’s evidence sits.
Who this is for
LEADERS inside established organisations who are:
01. Deciding which technologies or providers to bring into live services, and need an evaluation grounded in operational reality.
02. Testing a new venture or product idea, and need the evidence to back it, reshape it, or kill it before it spends serious budget.
03. Accountable to boards or funders for innovation spend, and need decisions that hold up to scrutiny.
04. Home to senior experts with venture ideas of their own, and want a structured way to explore them without betting the organisation on instinct.
What I do here
I bring the discipline that startup founders often learn after a few failures – evidence over enthusiasm, commercial reality over strategy theatre, lean experiments over polished unproven bets – into innovation decisions inside organisations.
1. Problem discovery & solution testing
DEEPLY UNDERSTANDing THE PROBLEM AND TESTing whether a solution will actually SOLVE IT before you commit serious budget to it.
Most innovation initiatives fail because they get budget with a solution already attached, before the problem is well understood. I work the other way round: structured discovery with the people closest to the work, the problem articulated with its baseline numbers, a proposed solution in whatever shape fits. And, most importantly, a cheap experiment proving it works, before you commit serious budget.
This is the work for teams who have seen promising technology fail on contact with operational reality, and want the next decision made differently.
The cheapest point to discover a solution doesn’t fit is before the contract is signed.
2. New venture & product validation
Turning an internal idea into an evidenced decision. The same validation discipline I apply with funded startups: testing the riskiest assumptions before they become expensive to be wrong about.
The output here is not a report no one reads, but a clear recommendation: back it, reshape it, or stop, with the evidence that justifies the call either way.
This is the work for teams who suspect an idea has legs, but know that suspicion is not a business case.
A well-evidenced “no” is one of the highest-return outcomes innovation work can produce.
3. Venture capability for internal teams
Building DECISION-grade thinking inside your organisation: how to frame a venture bet, what evidence actually reduces risk, and how investors and acquirers will eventually judge what you are building.
Engagements here include workshops, sprint facilitation, and ongoing advisory for teams and senior experts moving from domain expertise towards venture creation.
This is the work for organisations that want internal innovation to run with the rigour of an external raise.
The ventures that survive contact with the market are the ones held to market standards from day one.
How we work together
Engagements are scoped to the DECISION, not the calendar.
Sometimes it is a single evaluation sprint or facilitated workshop.
Sometimes it is a longer advisory relationship across an innovation portfolio.
Either way: direct, evidence-led, and built around the call your organisation needs to make next.