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Start with a report, build when it's earned

Start with one report. Everything after it is earned.

Every Labs engagement begins with one piece of work: a frontier report on your industry, written for your leadership team, with product concepts attached. If it's useful, we keep going on a fixed monthly retainer. If a concept is worth building, the same team builds it.
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Nothing is bundled in before it has earned its place. Everything short of a build is virtual.

To the first report
4–6 weeks
Frontier report on a retainer
Quarterly
Two-page brief and a call
Monthly
Product concepts a year
2–3

How it works

Five stages, one team, no bundles

Discovery and the first report are the whole of the first engagement. Concepts, builds and the years after follow only when the one before has paid its way.

  1. 01

    Weeks 1–4

    Discovery

    A short series of calls to get inside your industry and your organisation: where the value sits, where the friction is, and where frontier capability can change the game. Interviews and data access where useful. No site visits required.

  2. 02

    Weeks 4–6, then quarterly

    The report

    An industry-specific frontier report: developments, what we tested in the lab, competitive signals and concrete implications for you, presented to your leadership team with time for questions. The first one is the whole of the first engagement. On a retainer it becomes quarterly, with a two-page brief and a call each month in between.

  3. The first engagement ends here. The rest is earned.
    03

    Two or three a year

    Concepts

    Product concepts aligned to where your organisation is going: a new product, a new capability inside an existing one, a new way to reach your customers. They range from a fortnight's work to a major build. Each is scoped, justified and comes with a product spec, so you're deciding on something concrete that we're prepared to build. This is how your roadmap builds forward and stays relevant.

  4. 04

    When you say go

    Build

    Choose what to pursue and Labs builds it: rapid iteration from spec to finished product. Software and AI built by the same team that wrote the report. Physical devices designed and engineered in our lab to Red Dot standard.

  5. 05

    Live

    Run

    The finished product is handed to Edge Expert Services to host, operate and evolve on the Edge platform. Labs stays on the retainer, watching for the next move.

Commercials

Three lines. Each one earns the next.

A first report to start, a retainer if you want the cadence to continue, and builds priced per piece of work. Each is agreed on its own before the next is discussed.

01StartWhere every engagement begins

The first report

One report

Fixed price, agreed up front

Discovery with your leadership team, then a frontier report on your industry with product concepts attached. Four to six weeks. No commitment beyond it.

  • Discovery calls in the first fortnight
  • An industry-specific frontier report: what moved, what we tested, what it means for you
  • Two or three product concepts, each with the number it would move
  • Presented to your leadership team, with time for questions
  • Yours to keep, whether or not we continue
Ask what your first report would cover
02RetainIf the first report earns it

Insight on a fixed cadence

Fixed monthly

Scoped to your organisation

For organisations that want the report to keep coming and the team to stay close. One fee, fixed for the term, priced on the shape of your organisation rather than a rate card.

  • A frontier report every quarter
  • A two-page brief every month in between
  • Two or three product concepts a year, each with a spec
  • A monthly call with your leadership team
  • Ad hoc calls when something moves
03BuildWhen a concept is worth it

Building, when you want it

Scoped per concept

Fixed price or time and materials

Each build is priced on its own and agreed up front, before any work starts.

  • Rapid iteration from spec to finished product
  • Software and AI built by the Labs team
  • Physical devices designed and engineered in our lab
  • Handover to Edge Expert Services to run
  • Hosting on the Edge platform

Why this model

Incentives that point the same way as yours

A report that can turn into a retainer, with a build team attached, is unusual. Most advisers can't build, and most builders don't advise. We've set it up this way deliberately.
  1. 01

    Starting with one report means you decide with evidence, not a pitch. You've seen how we think about your industry and what we'd build before you commit to anything ongoing. If the first report isn't worth continuing from, you keep it and we part well.

  2. 02

    The retainer means we're paid to be right over time, not to be impressive once. A concept that doesn't pan out costs us credibility with a client we want to keep for years. So we only recommend what we're prepared to build.

  3. 03

    Building being optional means we have no incentive to invent work. Some months the right answer is “do nothing yet”, and we'll say so. When there is something worth building, you already know the team, and the team already knows your business.

  4. 04

    Handing the finished product to Expert Services means it keeps working. Labs doesn't run production systems. Edge Expert Services does, on infrastructure we own. You get one group for the idea, the build and the years after.

What you should expect from us

Our side of the bargain

Commitments, for every engagement

  1. §1

    On schedule, every time

    The brief and the report land on the day without chasing.

  2. §2

    Numbers, not adjectives

    Every concept carries an estimate of what it moves and by how much.

  3. §3

    “Not yet” when it isn't ready

    We'd rather lose a month than sell you a build that fails.

  4. §4

    One accountable team

    From insight to finished product, the same people.

  5. §5

    You own what we build

    Code, models tuned on your data, hardware designs: all yours.

  6. §6

    Independent by construction

    We don't resell anyone's robots or models. We only sell being right.

Questions

Frequently asked

Something we haven't covered?

Write to the team directly. We reply within two working days.

labs@edge.network
Couldn't we just do this ourselves with AI?
You could start, and you should: the tools are available to everyone, which is rather the point. What isn't available is three years of finding out which answers are wrong. Labs brings the question, sharpened by knowing your industry and the number that matters; the taste to throw out the first nine drafts; the lab evidence for what survives contact with reality; and the engineering to turn the tenth draft into a product that runs, at scale, on infrastructure someone is accountable for. A model gives you a good first idea in a minute. A product is the other ninety-five percent of the work, and that part still looks a lot like work.
Is Labs a consultancy?
Not in the usual sense. Consultancies advise and leave. Labs advises, then builds the finished product with the same team, then hands it to Edge Expert Services to run. We're judged on what ships.
Is the engagement in person or remote?
Remote. Everything on the retainer is delivered as reports, product specs and calls. Building happens in our lab and on the Edge platform. It's a virtual offer by design, so your team's time goes on decisions, not travel.
Where do the product concepts come from?
From the intersection of your roadmap and what the lab has shown to work. Some answer a question you've asked; some we bring because a capability has crossed from demo to deployable and it fits where you're going. Expect two or three a year, varying in size, each with a spec and the number it would move. They're the mechanism for keeping your roadmap relevant, not a sales pipeline for builds.
Do we have to start on a retainer?
No. Every engagement begins with a single report, priced and agreed up front, with nothing attached to it. The retainer is for organisations that want the cadence to continue once they've seen the first one. Most do, but it's a decision you take with the report in hand, not before.
Do we have to buy a build?
No. The retainer stands on its own. Building is there when a concept is worth pursuing, priced separately and agreed up front.
What kind of things do you build?
Mostly software and AI: agentic systems, models tuned to your data, internal tools, customer-facing products. Some physical devices when the concept calls for it, designed and engineered in our lab. Our device design has won multiple Red Dot awards.
How is this different from Edge Expert Services?
Expert Services provides senior engineering teams for the day-to-day running and evolving of systems. Labs exists for the moves that change the game: finding them, specifying them and building them. When a Labs build goes live, Expert Services takes it on.
Who owns what you build?
You do. Code, models fine-tuned on your data, hardware designs: all yours. We retain our general know-how and anything that pre-dates the engagement.
Is our data safe?
Anything sensitive runs on the Edge platform, sovereign infrastructure under your control, or on hardware in our lab that never leaves it. We agree the boundaries in writing during discovery.

Start with the first report

Tell us about your organisation and we'll come back with what the first report would cover, how long it would take, and what it would cost. Nothing beyond that until you've read it.

Talk to LabsRead a sample report