What we do

We build and operate innovation incubators, build useful software, and provide executive leadership and coaching. Mike and Alex work directly with the people involved, from the person doing the job to the people deciding where the company goes next.

These activities often belong together. A leader needs evidence for an investment decision. Someone inside the company has an idea worth trying. A working tool reveals what the organization needs to change. We stay close enough to connect those parts.

We build and operate innovation incubators.

A company has people who understand its work and can see possibilities that never reach a development backlog. We give them somewhere to try those ideas, with the tools, coaching, and practical help to make a first version useful. This can take the form of an internal innovation incubator or a customer-owned center of excellence.

We establish the program with an executive sponsor, recruit participants around real work, and help each person choose a tractable starting point. Then we run hands-on working sessions, build alongside people, review their results, and help them improve what they have made. Office hours and individual coaching keep the work moving between sessions.

The work might be a way to review product information, prepare a decision, compare documents, or apply a person's expertise consistently. Participants use their own examples and judge the results. They develop the ability to shape, inspect, and improve their tools as the tools develop.

The company gets working experiments, people able to use and extend them, reusable methods, and evidence about which ideas deserve investment. We help the sponsor decide what to keep local, what to develop further, and who should own it. An internal team, a partner, or an agreed Goose Group build can carry production implementation.

Operating the incubator includes making these decisions visible, keeping participants supported, and developing the people who will eventually run it. We agree the time participants and sponsors can commit, the implementation capacity available, and how responsibility will transfer.

See how workbenches support this work →

We build useful software.

When a team needs a product or a better way to do a consequential piece of work, we can carry it from discovery into operation. We work directly with users, shape the product, design the interactions, write the software, connect the relevant systems, and put a useful first version into their hands.

A build can be a focused tool or a larger service: a review workspace, a product pipeline, a customer-facing application, or an internal system that brings scattered records and decisions together. AI earns its place where it helps. The surrounding software still needs clear permissions, reliable records, understandable interfaces, and a way to handle mistakes.

We build in small increments and follow them into use. Users should be able to show us where the result falls short, and the team should be able to inspect what changed. Existing spreadsheets, exports, and downstream handoffs matter when people depend on them; we work out a transition that the business can actually use.

The team can be one senior builder, Mike and Alex together, or a small team with agreed collaborators. We name who carries product decisions, implementation, deployment, and support. The customer keeps the source and operating knowledge. Handover or continuing support is part of the arrangement we agree.

We provide executive leadership and coaching.

We work with founders, CEOs, and other C-level leaders who need experienced judgment across technology, product, and how their organization works. That can be an ongoing advisory relationship or a fractional leadership role with specific responsibilities and decision rights.

The work includes choosing where to invest, deciding what to build or buy, shaping a product or AI agenda, and working out the team and operating model needed to deliver it. We help leaders examine proposals, challenge assumptions, work through tradeoffs, and make decisions that their teams can act on.

Coaching happens around the leader's actual decisions and conversations. We can prepare a difficult discussion, work through a hiring or team-design question, or help translate an ambition into a useful first commitment. Direct work with operators and builders keeps that advice connected to what is happening.

A recurring session might lead to a decision brief, a changed priority, a clearer responsibility, or a working session with the people who can resolve the issue. When we take a fractional role, we agree what we can decide, what remains with the executive team, and how progress will be reviewed. The aim is better decisions and stronger leaders inside the company.

Start with the work

Across all three areas, we look at real inputs, decisions, handoffs, and exceptions with the people dealing with them. Their knowledge shapes the first useful thing we build or change.

See the work. Understand who needs the result, what they need it for, and what gets in their way.
Choose a useful test. Name the person, the inputs, the output, and the decision the evidence should inform.
Build and use it together. Keep the corrections, surprises, and limits visible.
Decide what comes next. Improve it, keep it lightweight, invest in reliable operation, hand it over, or stop.
Leave the capability behind. The customer keeps the source, tools, working knowledge, and ability to continue.

Choose the arrangement

A bounded discovery sprint is useful when the first decision is still unclear. We inspect the work, source material, and existing attempts, make small tests where they help, and recommend what to pursue. A typical sprint takes two to four weeks, depending on access and scope. The result is a first brief and a reasoned decision about what to build, buy, change, or leave alone.

An ongoing engagement reserves time for operating an incubator, leadership and coaching, or a combination of them. A software engagement names a useful outcome and the team responsible for delivering it, with regular opportunities to adjust the scope as evidence improves.

These arrangements can overlap. An incubator may uncover a need for a dedicated build; an advisory relationship may begin with discovery. We agree the change in responsibility and capacity when that happens.

Read the discovery arrangement →

Share in an opportunity

Occasionally a relationship can support shared investment in a new capability or business. We begin with paid discovery and credible evidence. Shared economics come later, when the contribution, ownership, and opportunity are understood well enough to discuss them honestly.

Read the value-partner arrangement →

The practicalities

Before starting, we make the following explicit in a short working agreement. As the work develops, we revisit the parts that no longer fit.

People and decisions: A sponsor able to commit priorities and resources, a person close to the work, and named product and technical owners. We agree what Mike and Alex own and where a decision needs somebody else.
Time and access: The time reserved on both sides, access to real users and examples, and the systems we need. Building and enabling others both draw on that time; their relative priority is a shared decision.
Working rhythm: Hands-on sessions, direct collaboration, and a shared place to inspect progress. The cadence follows the work. Reviews should result in a decision, a useful correction, or a clearer next step.
Scope and fees: The outcome or operating responsibility, the people carrying it, the budget or fee basis, and the point at which we review the arrangement. New commitments are discussed with the person who can authorize them.
Use and support: How people will validate the result, who can release changes, who handles problems, and what ongoing support includes. If people depend on the software, its operating owner needs to be clear.
Ownership and transfer: Customers keep their source, artifacts, workbenches, and operating knowledge. We plan the handover through participation, documentation, and real operation, so the next improvement is easier to make.

If you have a piece of work in mind, tell us what you want to change.

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