Decide what you are known for, before the field decides for you.
Most accomplished researchers are described by their department and grade, because nothing else has been written down. Positioning is the decision about which single problem you are the obvious authority on, and the language that makes that decision legible to funders, journalists and industry, not just to your reviewers.
Hi Professor,
What positioning and narrative has produced for academics and researchers like you:
▋
Why an excellent publication list still gets overlooked.
Your job title tells a stranger which department you sit in, not what you can be trusted to judge.
A CV that spans many collaborations and grants means being memorable for none of them.
The people who issue invitations, panels, funders, editors, need one sentence they can repeat to a committee. If you have not written it, they will invent a weaker one.
Your institutional page, your ORCID profile and your biography each say something slightly different, so nothing compounds.
The researcher who is easier to describe wins the panel seat, even when the more accomplished researcher is available.
Roughly how long a programme officer spends on a profile before deciding to read the proposal.
The number of positions a funder or journalist can reliably remember about you.
Share of advisory panel and editorial board seats filled through informal recommendation before any call for nominations appears.
Positioning and Narrative, step by step.
Evidence review
We read everything already public about you: institutional page, ORCID, search results, papers, talks, press, funder acknowledgements. We note what a stranger would conclude and where the record contradicts itself.
Positioning interview
Ninety minutes on what you actually know that others do not, which rooms and panels you want to be in, what you will and will not say outside a peer-reviewed context, and how visible you are willing to be.
Category choice
We propose two or three defensible categories, each with the audience it addresses and the funding or partnership opportunities it opens. You choose one. We write the claim in a single sentence.
Message architecture
The claim, the three proof pillars underneath it, the language to use with funders, industry partners, journalists and conference organisers, and the hedges to drop.
Surface alignment
Every public surface rewritten to the same claim: institutional page, ORCID biography, LinkedIn, speaker profile, funder boilerplate and the introduction a chair will read before your keynote.
Deliverables, not adjectives.
Around three hours in the first month: one interview, one options call, one approval pass. After that, positioning is a reference document rather than a task.
Academics who want to remain unattached to any particular claim. Positioning works by excluding things, and if nothing can be excluded there is nothing to position.
- A written positioning statement, one sentence, defensible in a room of non-specialists
- Two or three proof pillars with the evidence that supports each
- Audience map: which funders, editors and partners must recognise the claim
- Message and language guidelines, including what to leave in the methods section
- Rewritten LinkedIn headline and About section
- Long, medium and short biographies for grant applications, press and panels
- Speaker introduction, thirty seconds, written to be read aloud
- A twelve month opportunity thesis: the panels, calls and collaborations this position opens
An honest sequence.
Evidence review and positioning interview.
Category options presented and decided.
Message architecture and biographies drafted.
Every public surface aligned and live.
A senior lecturer with twenty one years in translational oncology
Headline: Senior Lecturer at a research-intensive university. About section: a chronological list of grants held. Search results returned a staff directory entry and a departmental seminar listing.
Headline stating the specific translational bottleneck he resolves. About section written for funders and industry partners rather than fellow specialists. Biographies, speaker profile and funder boilerplate aligned to the same claim.
Inbound conversations from two biotech companies within weeks, then a co-investigator invitation on a major consortium bid inside ninety days.
The questions academics and researchers ask first.
It removes the ones you were never going to win and increases the ones you will. Nobody is recommended for a panel because they are generally knowledgeable. They are recommended because someone could describe them in one line.
Authority Building
Why doctors stop publishing after three weeks.
Press and Recognition
Why good doctors never get quoted.
From health to tech
Why the move stalls for capable doctors.
Career strategy
Why doctors take the wrong opportunities.
Client acquisition
Being known is not the same as being booked.
Ready to make positioning and narrative work for you?
Pick a time below. Fifteen minutes, private, no pitch. We'll tell you where we think your expertise has the greatest commercial value.
required
24 hours
worldwide
