Author of Breakthrough · Founder of Bright Arena
Make your research matter.
Foundations, mission-led investors and industry are searching for researchers to partner with. Too little research reaches them. Breakthrough is how yours does.
Leading the executive roundtables with senior foundation leaders at the Milken Institute, Los Angeles: the catalyst for Breakthrough.
1,000+
researchers, from first lab to institute director
$300M+
directed into research
40+
ventures now scaling
Strategic advisory for organisations including
Researcher programs at institutions including
Researcher-founded ventures including
The book
The research system has changed. Will you change with it?
Breakthrough shows what is happening beneath the surface of the research economy: why talented researchers feel stuck, under-funded and unable to gain traction, and how work really moves from discovery to the world.
It draws on the stories of researchers who crossed the gap, and on twenty years advising the funders, institutes and philanthropic leaders on the other side of it.
Their breakthrough stories are the proof. The Breakthrough Method is for making the crossing yourself.
The method
The Breakthrough Method
Progress depends on three things: value, alignment and support. The method makes your work legible to the people who fund it. Three moves over twelve months, applied to your own projects, not case studies.
01
Catalyse
Create value. Give form, clarity and direction to your ideas, projects and goals.
In practice: turns raw supply into product, work the world can adopt.
02
Connect
Build alignment. Engage the right people and create momentum.
In practice: tests real demand and opens the market where value is recognised.
03
Commit
Secure support. Gain the backing, resources or capital the work needs.
In practice: converts capital into execution, the capacity to deliver.
The framework
The Breakthrough Framework
Three forces decide whether research reaches the world: supply, demand and capital. Where two overlap you get a lever: product, market or execution. Where all three align, you’ve built Strategic Advantage. Catalyse, Connect and Commit are how you build it.
Strategic Advantage
All three forces, aligned on your work. Not talent, instinct or luck: position. Research that holds the centre gets backed, adopted and delivered. Catalyse, Connect and Commit move you here, and advantage is built, not granted.
The membership
Everything you need. Nothing you don’t.
I work with researchers and their institutes.
Immersions
Four a year. Mornings to learn; afternoons on your own project.
Between
Ninety-day cycles, so progress happens in your research life, not a workshop.
Guidance
One-to-one and group sessions, plus peers doing the same work.
Progression
Staged. You advance when the evidence says so.
Resources
Tools, recordings and events, there when you need them.
What researchers say
In their words.
We came with an exciting new technology but none of the communication or commercialisation skills that could supercharge our idea. Two years on, our journey has led to us successfully launching Proxima Bio as co-founders.
Jon Bernardini & Jason Brouwer, co-founders, Proxima Bio
Given the exquisite fragility of the grant system at the moment, it feels good to have another bow in the quiver, and in years to come, I will describe this as a career game changer.
Aideen McInerney-Leo, University of Queensland
It created a completely non-judgemental, deeply supportive environment where I could step outside the academic bubble and genuinely explore the real-world impact of my research.
Sara Berent, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute
Praise for Breakthrough
For a researcher of my vintage, “engaging industry” was such an abstract concept I had no idea what it really even meant. This opened a curtain to a larger landscape of science and discovery translation, commercialisation, and marketplace delivery.
Jenni Gunter, Queensland University of Technology
It challenged the way I thought about my research and its potential value and impact, and provided a framework to transform what was in essence a “pie-in-the-sky” idea into a feasible project with tangible objectives and milestones.
Kristen Radford, Mater Research
Even if they don’t decide to venture on a commercial path, the skills and tools will make their research, and ability to present it, vastly better.
Niall Geoghegan, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute
About
I’ve worked with more than a thousand researchers, from first laboratory to institute director, and helped direct over $300 million into medical research. The approach behind both is the same: make research legible, visible, and relevant to the people backing it.
Before research, I designed platforms that reshaped finance and media. That’s why I read this as an infrastructure problem. Capital wants to back breakthroughs and can’t reliably find them. Not for lack of intent or appetite, but for lack of market infrastructure.
I’m also founder and CEO of Bright Arena, where we’re building that infrastructure: the shared rails that let capital find and back the research most likely to change lives.
Where research and capital find each other.
One place where research gets found, checked and backed: open to researchers, foundations, investors and industry.
Your research deserves to reach the world.
Start with Part One. If it lands, the method is waiting.
Breakthrough? Let's break through.