Research that has to survive contact with a factory.
This company began with research and a patent rather than a business plan, and it took seven years to carry the first of those patents to a product. That experience shapes how we do research for other people.
Research and patent capabilities
From a hypothesis nobody has tested to a filed patent and a route to manufacture.
Applied Research
Research aimed at a specific problem and judged by whether it moves that problem. We work on questions where the answer is meant to become equipment, a process or a filing.
Testing
Trials designed so the result means something — controls, repeats, and a stated way for the hypothesis to fail. A test that cannot fail has told you nothing.
Laboratory Validation
Establishing that an effect is real and reproducible at bench scale, and characterising the conditions under which it holds — before anyone commits to a pilot.
Analytical Research
Measuring what is actually happening rather than what the design intended — characterisation, sampling regimes, and interpreting data that rarely arrives clean.
Patent Drafting
Specifications and claims written by people who understand the engineering, working alongside your patent attorney. A claim drafted without the technology in view protects less than it appears to.
Patent Development
Carrying an invention through the years after filing — supporting examination, and developing the embodiments that decide whether a granted patent is worth holding.
Innovation Consulting
Helping a team decide what to work on and what to stop — where a real technical advantage exists, where it can be protected, and where the honest answer is to buy rather than invent.
Your invention stays yours
Ownership of anything arising from work we do for you is settled in writing before the work starts, not afterwards. We do not publish, present or reuse a client’s technical material, and we do not name clients on this website without their permission.
Questions before you engage us
Before research starts, the questions that decide whether it is worth starting.
What kind of research do you take on?
Applied research aimed at a specific problem and judged by whether it moves that problem. We work on questions whose answer is meant to become equipment, a process or a patent filing, not a paper.
Who owns the results and any patent?
You do. Ownership of anything arising from the work is settled in writing before the work starts, not afterwards, and we do not publish, present or reuse a client’s technical material.
Do you draft patents?
We write specifications and claims with the engineering in view, working alongside your patent attorney rather than in place of one. A claim drafted without the technology understood protects less than it appears to.
How long does it take from an idea to a product?
Honestly, longer than anyone plans for. A bench-scale validation is measured in weeks or months; carrying our own first patent from filing to a product took seven years. We say which of those you are looking at before the work starts.
How do you design a test so the result means something?
With controls, repeats, and a stated way for the hypothesis to fail. A test that cannot fail has told you nothing, and we will not run one to make a report look better.
Will our work be kept confidential?
Yes. We do not publish, present or reuse a client’s technical material, and we do not name clients on this website without their permission. That applies to work that succeeds and to work that does not.
Have a question nobody has answered yet?
Those are the interesting ones. Tell us about it, or see what we are working on in Innovations.