An advisory built on two decades of building businesses and half a decade of advising them.
Panthera Advisory is led by Simon Clifford MBA. His first two decades in leadership roles were spent building businesses, including co-founding an AI company and growing specialist engineering firms from start-up to eight figures. Five years advising others then followed, including extended cohort work with Innovate UK as an Innovation Growth Specialist, and as a BSI champion for its suite of standards, including responsible innovation and AI. Panthera Advisory was born from that experience: a UK SME-focused practice for innovation and AI, from initial decision through implementation.
The building came first.
Two decades of leadership roles covered the ground a working practice has to know. Co-founding and running an AI company through its first growth phase. Leading specialist engineering firms from start-up to eight-figure revenues. Carrying responsibility for the operational and financial decisions, new product development, go-to-market strategies, market entry, and the innovation work behind the products and processes that made any of it possible. Panthera Advisory is grounded in that work.
The advising came next.
The core was one-to-one engagement with UK SMEs through the Innovate UK Business Growth programme, as an Innovation Growth Specialist (IGS). Months of advisory time per business, across approaching 100 UK firms, focused on growth strategy and the operational discipline that sustains it.
BSI champion status carried the responsibility for embedding standards literacy across the IGS cohort and with clients directly. ISO 56001 (innovation management) and ISO 42001 (AI management) were very much a contemporary focus, alongside the ISO 27000 series (information security). All of them extend from ISO 9001, the international quality standard adopted by over a million organisations worldwide.
The advisory work also included connecting clients to the wider ecosystem of UK SME support. The Cyber Essentials scheme, the UK Government programme run by the National Cyber Security Centre to raise the cyber resilience of UK organisations against common attacks. Innovate UK's Design for Growth programme, where design was the strongest innovation lever.
Literate in the standards, pragmatic in their use.
Panthera Advisory works in alignment with the structure and intent of the management system standards for innovation and AI. ISO 56001, ISO 42001, ISO 27001, ISO 27002 and ISO 9001 are Panthera's working references. The Cyber Essentials scheme sits alongside them as the UK practical baseline.
The work navigates the tension between pragmatism, cost, and future-proofing. Projects are designed to fit the business: what it can do now, what it can afford, and where it might want to go. A business that later pursues formal accreditation should find itself on the front foot, not back at the start.
A practice built for a specific kind of work.
The current climate has sharpened the case for innovation discipline. SMEs face margin pressure and hiring caution. The vendor market offers tools built wide rather than fitted. The buyer pays for capabilities they don't need, sometimes with the cost of switching platforms on top.
Panthera Advisory was built to address that imbalance. Every SME is uniquely built and uniquely operated. The work starts with the business as it actually is, and builds from there. Not retrofitting something off the shelf onto a business that isn't shaped for it.
Ready to talk?
A conversation costs nothing and commits you to nothing. Thirty to sixty minutes, on the phone or by video, to discuss whether Panthera Advisory is the right fit for your business, and what scope and cost might look like.