Case studies: where our clients' growth came from

The challenge

BHP's R&D effort ran across international groups with different mandates and no shared way to compare them. Leadership judged every project on the same four questions — how mature the technology is, how big the business impact could be, how far competitors have already moved, and whether BHP held any IP edge — but had no consistent way to score a project against them, and no consistent way to decide whether to buy, build, partner or invest. Budget sat unallocated because nobody could show, with evidence, which project was worth the spend.

What we did

We built one scoring rubric that could be applied to any technology, so a mining-automation program and a cybersecurity program could be compared on the same terms. Every assessment scored four areas — technology, intellectual property, market and competitive position — on the same five-point scale, and every score carried its own confidence rating, so a finding drawn from a patent filing or an annual report counted differently from one drawn from a press release. For the programs worth pursuing, we identified strategic partners and negotiated collaboration and field-trial agreements for technology access.

The result

Twelve programs assessed and scored. Across the programs where we scored the window of opportunity, BHP was leading the market in none of them — and held a real window to lead, if it acted, in five. In the rest, the honest finding was that BHP's best case was to catch the market rather than lead it: a signal to buy or partner rather than build.

Why it matters

That split is the finding. Most of the bets were still winnable, but only inside a window that was closing — which is exactly the evidence a budget conversation needs. More good ideas than people is the most common growth problem we see, and this is how it gets solved at scale.

The challenge

South32 had stood up a new internal team to find emerging technologies worth backing, and no consistent way to judge what arrived. Ideas came in from across the business in whatever shape the person writing them chose. Vendors pitched unsolicited. Nothing could be compared against anything else, so nothing could be confidently funded.

What we did

A scoring rubric is only useful if ideas arrive in a shape it can score, so we built the intake as well as the scoring: a problem-statement form, a fuller capture document behind it, a parallel form so inbound vendor pitches were judged on the same terms as internal ideas, and a business value framework that weighted the score, so a technically exciting idea with no path to value could not outrank a modest one with a clear path.

The first rubric ran to 21 factors. We tested it with South32's own analysts, found it too heavy to apply consistently at the volume they needed, and cut it to 16 — four per quadrant, each with plain scoring language and a worked example.

The result

Four documented procedures and a rubric their own team could run, each closed out with a walkthrough and a tutorial for the wider group rather than a file sent over. South32 ran the intake themselves; we scored what came out.

Why it matters

The rubric wasn't handed down finished. It was built, tested against the people who had to use it, and cut back until it worked — which is what installing a capability looks like, as opposed to delivering a report about one.

The challenge

A private equity buyer was weeks from a final bid in a competitive process. The target's product line, and a reformulation it planned to launch the following quarter, both sat in a crowded patent space held by much larger companies. If something in there was deal-blocking, they needed to know before bidding, not during post-close integration. What they did not need was a document.

What we did

We ran two freedom-to-operate scans in parallel: one across the existing product, its manufacturing process and its packaging; one across the planned reformulation. We concentrated on filings from the last six to seven years, where the activity was densest, with a lighter sweep back two decades, and we looked specifically for the scenarios that kill deals — elements that read directly onto a major competitor's patent, techniques already claimed and enforced internationally, and patents currently in litigation.

The deliverable was a thirty-minute call: all clear, monitoring needed, or high risk, with the specific patents of concern and the questions worth putting to the management team. They had asked for speed over paperwork, so we gave them speed.

The result

An evidence-backed read on deal-blocking risk inside the bid window, for a fixed $24,750 — with an explicit off-ramp: if a fatal issue surfaced, the engagement stopped there and no further money was spent. The full written analysis, at $40,250, was contingent on them actually winning the bid. A capped bank of support hours sat in between for the fortnight of the final bid, so the deal team could get a question answered in hours rather than waiting on a report.

Why it matters

Diligence that arrives after the decision is an expense. This is what it looks like priced around the decision instead: the cheap, fast phase runs first and can stop everything, and the expensive phase only happens if there is a company to spend it on.