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Expert has worked for more than 20 years on business development from research and consultancy perspectives, and as a director of new businesses seeking to expand from start-up stage. He was the private sector representative on New Zealand Trade and Enterprise's Growth Service Funding scheme Panel for seven years, assessing the business development plans of hundreds of high growth, export focused small businesses. Expert has prepared business plans for both young and mature small, high technology companies, and for research institutes, seeking to grow their revenues.

Expert established New Zealand's business incubator funding scheme in 2001.

For over 10 years, he has been on the funding panel that assessed all of New Zealand's business and technology incubators seeking Government funding. This has involved viewing full presentations from their managers on their successes, operations to date, strategies and financial plans. Expert has also undertaken an analysis of global best practice with respect to the operation of incubators, and worked on a feasibility study of a proposed business incubator.

Expert has extensive experience in undertaking due diligence for, and reviewing the performance of, industry/government co-funded research consortia. New Zealand has a world-leading model for this type of structure. Expert has undertaken more than 50 relevant due diligence and review assignments, with total multi-year budgets totaling up to NZ$90 million. Terms of reference have typically covered ownership, legal structure, governance, management, operational and financial reporting, co-funding compliance, IP strategy and commercialization, and risk assessment. At times he has worked alongside a technical expert assessing the quality and outputs of the research programmes.

He was instrumental in developing the operating policy for the government's first ever industry research consortium programme. He then undertook the due diligence as a pre-requisite to funding decisions(total government/ industry funding now over $110 million). He subsequently executed more than 30 operational/ governance reviews of all of the research consortia. These assignments involved extensive application of expertise in shareholder agreements, legal structure, governance, management, research contracting arrangements, accounting and administration arrangements, intellectual property strategy and management, technology commercialisation, funding terms and conditions and shareholder entry and exit from the consortia. He also visited the controlling Federal government agency and practical operating institutional examples of analogous Co-operative Research Centres in Australia.