UNDISCOVERED PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE
UPK is a strategic advisory practice. We work with a small number of organisations to locate and connect the thinking that solves their most consequential problems.
01 // Founding idea
Most significant problems are not unsolved.
They are unconnected.
The answers exist.
The people who hold them have not yet met.
In 1986, Don Swanson proposed that the answers to major scientific questions often already exist in published literature — distributed across disciplines whose researchers have never read one another's work. He called this undiscovered public knowledge.
The same principle operates in organisations, industries, and policy environments. The expertise, the precedent, the solution — they are present. The gap is structural: the right people have not been in the same room, in the right configuration, with the right framing.
UPK exists to close that gap.
02 // How we work
Method
Pre-Problem.
Our work combines what a client already understands about their situation with our own independent diagnostics — mapping what has been identified against what has not yet been named. Nothing is proposed without first tracing a trajectory of likely outcomes. The question is never only what the solution is, but what the solution leads to.
Direct engagement, total discretion.
Our most effective working relationships are with the person at the head of the matter. Not a committee, not a delegated team — the individual who carries the decision. That relationship is kept close and confidential from the outset. Teams and third parties are brought in when the work requires it, overseen throughout, and engaged only where their involvement serves the outcome. The point of entry is always the same: a single, open, ongoing conversation.
Design Debt.
Most advisory work ends at the recommendation. Ours does not. Design debt is the cost incurred when a decision fails to account for its own prolonged consequences — structural, relational, operational. A solution that creates downstream problems it did not anticipate has not solved anything. It has deferred it. Every proposal we make is reasoned against what it will demand of the people and systems that have to live with it long after the engagement has closed.
03 // Selected work
Engagements
Defence & National Security.
Prototype design, environment architecture, and operational protocol development for a defence-focused technology venture. Work spans the full design process — from initial concept and systems positioning through to the articulation of the proposition for institutional audiences.
Public Policy.
Research and framework development exploring the conditions for effective governance in a fast-changing political and social landscape. Produced as a long-form position paper, the work examines the structural failures of contemporary governing models and proposes principles for a more honest and durable alternative.
Creative & Cultural Industries.
Concept and environment design for cultural institutions seeking to build spaces that work harder for the people inside them. Drawing on current research in human behaviour, learning science, and end-user experience, the work focuses on the optimisation of immersive and educational environments around human outcomes rather than aesthetic or programmatic convention.
Early-Stage Ventures.
Thinking partnership across a critical period for a founder building at the intersection of two established fields. The engagement combined strategic diagnostics, proposition development, and the ongoing advisory relationship that early-stage decision-making demands.
04 // Contact
We work with a small number of clients at any one time. Enquiries are always welcome.
UPK operates by referral and direct enquiry. A brief description of the problem is sufficient to begin a conversation.