For Strategic Research & Consultancy

The Company

Acumen Research and Consultancy Ltd provides strategic research and consultancy services on a wide range of issues raised by the emergence of information-based societies.

Acumen was first established in 1982 as a partnership between Nick Moore and Elaine Kempson. Since then we have undertaken over 100 assignments for a wide range of clients.

In all our work we aim to provide results that are robust, simple to understand and easy to apply.

Our work can be grouped into five main areas:

Contact details

Address
Acumen Research and Consultancy Ltd., Brompton Ralph, Taunton TA4 2RU, United Kingdom.
Telephone
+44 (0)1984 623668
Fax
+44 (0)1984 624838
E-mail
nick.moore@acumenuk.co.uk - elaine.kempson@acumenuk.co.uk

Biographies

Professor Nick Moore

Nick is the Managing Director in Acumen. He has extensive international experience of evaluation, research and consultancy.

He worked full-time for Acumen from 1982 until 1987 when he was appointed the first Professor of Information Management at Birmingham Polytechnic. In 1989 he joined the Policy Studies Institute to establish a programme of information policy research. During this period he managed a series of studies on the European information content industry as well as a number of projects exploring the provision of social information.

In 1995-6 he was associated with the British Council, studying the development of information societies in East Asia and advising the Council on its information strategy in that region.

In 1998 he re-joined Acumen full-time to continue his research and consultancy. He was part-time Professor of Information Policy at City University between 1998 and 2000 and is currently Visiting Professor in Information Strategy at the University of Brighton. He is a Visiting Fellow of Bristol University.

He is the author of How to do research, which is now in its third edition. He has presented numerous conference papers all over the world and has published widely.

Professor Elaine Kempson

Elaine is the other founding partner in Acumen. She maintains her involvement although she is currently working full-time as the Director of the Personal Finance Research Centre at the University of Bristol.

During the 1980s, Elaine's work for Acumen concentrated on information and citizenship and on the development of information and advice services, building on her previous experience as the Director of the Community Information Project. She was largely responsible for taking forward the development of standards for advice services and she did much to consolidate their funding base as the first Chair of the Advice Services Alliance.

Towards the end of the 1980s, Elaine joined the Policy Studies Institute and established a programme of research into the use of credit and the incidence of debt among British households. In 1998 she was invited to take her research programme to the University of Bristol where she established the Personal Finance Research Centre

Since then, Elaine has undertaken a very wide range of project for a large number of sponsors. Through this she has advanced our understanding of the impact of financial exclusion and she is now widely consulted by government and by organisations in the financial services sector.

Elaine retains a close interest in Acumen and its development.

Clients

These are some of the organisations for which we have worked in the last few years.