Technical and commercial expertise  

Added Lightness Ltd was founded to help businesses with THEIR technical and commercial challenges

Added Lightness is led by Ben Farmer. Ben is a Chartered Engineer, with a background in composite materials and additive manufacturing, and has a keen interest in entrepreneurship and commercialisation.

Ben holds a first-class honours degree in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Bath and a PhD in Materials Science and Metallurgy from the University of Cambridge. His doctoral thesis was concerned with the growth mechanisms of Carbon Nanotubes. Ben’s career started at Cobham Advanced Composites as a Composites Engineer, before moving to the University of Bath, to lead a project on engagement of small and medium sized enterprises in aerospace in the innovation process. Following this he spent nine years at Airbus where he led the transnational development of Composite Technologies before leading the integration of Additive Manufacturing Technologies across the Airbus Group businesses. During this time, he returned to studying at the University of Bath where he completed an MBA degree specialising in corporate strategy and entrepreneurship. A move then ensued to then start-up HiETA Technologies where, holding various technical and commercial roles, he contributed to the five-fold growth of the company. Ben has also founded two businesses which combine his professional expertise in composites and additive manufacturing with his long-held interest in mountain biking. The most recent of these is Atherton Bikes.

Ben has experience in all stages of commercial and technology development, from pre-conceptual to growth and scale-up, and has worked across a diversity of sectors from aerospace and defence, space, automotive, energy, sporting goods to construction and infrastructure.

Latterly, his focus has been on combining his broad engineering expertise and understanding of key emerging technologies with the latest in commercial practices. 

Commercial

• Corporate strategy

• Business model development

• Value proposition development

• Lean start-up

• Business case development

• Market and business development

• Strategic marketing

Technology Development

• Concept development

• Design-thinking

• Road mapping

• Project management

• Technology Readiness Level assessment

• Programme management

• Collaborative R&D bid writing

• Private venture bid writing

• Technology due diligence

• Intellectual property management