Capabilities - Feasibility, prototypes, hard problems
R&D and special projects
The work that has no reference design and no obvious owner.
What that means in practice
- Feasibility studies: can this be built, at what cost, under which regulation
- Rapid prototyping and proof-of-concept builds across hardware and software
- SBIR-funded research, where the work has to be performed in the United States
- Applied research on problems with no commercial answer yet
- Technology scouting and build-versus-buy analysis
- Special projects teams assembled around a single hard question
- Depth
- Two decades of work that began as an undefined problem statement rather than a specification, across classified-adjacent research, product engineering and venture formation.
- Who I bring in
- Domain researchers, test laboratories, prototype fabricators, and US-based teams who have delivered SBIR work.
- Scoping this
- Bring me the question nobody has scoped yet. A short feasibility engagement usually tells you whether the rest is worth funding.
Where I write about this
The newsletter follows what is changing here: one drawing, one decision worth revisiting, one tool used in anger, and what I am seeing across the network. Research worth reading gets cited when it changes a decision.
Adjacent
Rarely just one domain.
Most engagements touch three or four. These are the ones that usually come with it.
- RF, electromagnetics and analog Circuits, antennas, spectrum
- Semiconductor and programmable logic VLSI, ASIC, FPGA
- Embedded systems and device drivers Firmware, kernel, board bring-up
- Hardware manufacturing and supply ODM, DFM, certification
- Industrial automation and controls Robotics, SCADA, OT
- Software engineering Systems, automation, quality
- Cloud and infrastructure architecture Hybrid, containers, automation
- Security engineering Architecture, identity, testing
- Governance, risk and compliance Audit, frameworks, fractional CISO
- Water, power and energy systems Treatment, generation, infrastructure
- Technical leadership and advisory Robotics, capital projects, family offices