Model-selection cheat sheet
Which model, which mode, which task — tested live against the free tier.
Build 15 working AI assets for your own business in 2.5 days
From AI-curious to AI-capable — working on your own business, not a case study. You leave with a roadmap, a University of Bath certificate, and a 60-day follow-up clinic.
Most AI training teaches you a tool. This builds the judgement that outlasts it.
At one end are short vendor-led courses that teach you today’s platform — useful, but that platform will look different in a year. At the other are premium executive programmes with brilliant strategic thinking, at a price only a few can reach.
This sits deliberately between the two. You work hands-on with the tools, on your own business challenges. But the real takeaway is judgement: where AI genuinely helps, how to lead adoption without tripping over GDPR or team resistance, and how to build a roadmap you can act on the following Monday.
The question is rarely what a programme costs. It is what another year of guessing costs.
Your team is using free AI tools right now, with client information, under no policy and no oversight. Most leaders discover the exposure after it matters. You will write your firm’s AI policy in the room.
Subscriptions nobody uses. A pilot that stalls. A supplier who sold you a solution to a problem you did not have. Most organisations waste more than this programme costs in their first year of AI.
Competitors who worked this out eighteen months ago are not twice as fast. They have restructured what their people spend the day doing. That distance grows, and it is not recovered in a one-day workshop.
Every one configured on your own company’s data and problems, in the room, with help beside you. All of them still work on the Monday.
Which model, which mode, which task — tested live against the free tier.
Your three most-used prompts, rewritten to expert standard.
A live AI workspace loaded with your company context, documents and instructions.
A sourced deep-research report on your own market.
A strategist, a sceptical CFO and a marketing director — tuned to your business, on call whenever you need to think something through.
Presentation-grade output generated from the day's work.
Seven thousand words on your own company, from more than fifty sources — launched before dinner, waiting when you wake up.
Campaign imagery and copy for a real campaign.
Your own numbers, live and interactive — built in an afternoon by someone who does not write code.
Your first configured agent, plus a ranked list of what to delegate.
One page. Yours. Written in the room.
Impact against ease — your number one quick win and your number one strategic bet.
Quick wins, strategic bets, capability building.
The seven-day initiative, the ninety-day wins, and who you take with you.
Presented to a panel of your peers, properly challenged, and revised before you leave.
An SME leader gives up two working days, not three. The half day comes out of the weekend — and it is the half day where everything you have built becomes a plan.
The model landscape that actually matters. Expert prompting. Context and projects — why context beats cleverness. Deep research. Your AI advisory board. Turning output into board-ready work.
You end the day with a working personal AI operating system for your role — and an opportunity report on your own company generating overnight.
The media layer. Your data, talking — spreadsheet to live dashboard. Agents and automation: what to delegate and what never to. A real regional SME transformation, before and after. Safety, GDPR and the human-in-the-loop rule.
You leave with a company AI policy you wrote yourself, and a matrix that tells you exactly where the return is.
Leading the change: crawl, walk, run. Overcoming team resistance. Building your 12–36 month roadmap and your First 90 Days plan, then presenting it to a panel of peers who will test it properly.
You walk out with a roadmap that has already survived challenge — and a certificate from the University of Bath.
Per contact hour, this programme costs roughly a third more than a one-day online course — for in-person delivery, work on your own business, and 15 assets you keep.
Senior Lecturer in Strategy and Entrepreneurship, and Director of Studies for the MSc in Entrepreneurship and Management at the University of Bath School of Management.
He does not only teach this. For the past 3 years he has been building and installing AI operating systems in real businesses, his own included — which is why the programme is about what actually works rather than what demonstrates well.
This is the age of the generalist manager. If you know how to direct it, you have specialist expertise at your fingertips — and the job shifts from doing the work to being the architect.
90-second reel — RedSky IT keynote · EntreConf Bristol · AI Masterclass at Bath
Prefer the long form? Watch the full 30-minute EntreConf keynote.
£2,000 for Help to Grow and University of Bath alumni — a £500 reduction.
Booking goes through the secure University of Bath checkout. If you would like the full programme guide first, or want to check the fit before committing, make an enquiry — we reply by email within two working days.
A setup pack goes out two weeks beforehand, and a toolkit clinic runs from 08:30 on the first morning — so nobody starts the first exercise locked out.
Those courses are genuinely good at what they do — they will get you comfortable with a tool in a day. The question is what you are left with a year later, when that tool has changed. This is not a course about a piece of software. It is two and a half days on where AI earns its place in your business, how to bring your team with you, and how to stay the right side of data and governance. A day course gives you a skill. This gives you a plan, 15 working assets, and something to show for it.
You absolutely can, and plenty of it is good. What free content cannot give you is someone applying it to your business, in the room, while you build the plan — or an honest, independent read on what is hype from people with nothing to sell you. Free is perfect for curiosity. This is for when you have decided to actually do something and want to get it right first time.
If the goal is the name on the certificate above all else, those programmes are excellent and priced accordingly — often three to four times this, over more days. What you are choosing here is a different balance: a strong Russell Group school, built around your business rather than a case study, at a price and a time commitment a working leader can actually justify.
Frame it against the alternative. Most organisations waste considerably more than that in their first year of AI — subscriptions nobody uses, a project that stalls, or a data slip. Two and a half days that prevent one of those pays for the programme several times over. And you do not leave empty-handed: you leave with a roadmap you can put to work on the Monday.
That is exactly why it is not a tool course. Specific tools change constantly, which is why the programme is not built around any one of them. What does not date is knowing how to evaluate a new tool, where AI genuinely creates value in a business like yours, how to lead the change, and how to manage the risk.
That puts you ahead of most — and in our experience it is where the real questions start rather than stop. It works in pockets, it is not joined up, nobody is quite sure about the data side, and there is no plan for scaling beyond the enthusiasts. This programme is aimed precisely at that stage.
No. No coding, and no assumption you are a data scientist. It is pitched at business leaders. Day one meets you wherever you are starting from; day two and three flex to your sector and your level. With a cohort capped at twenty, the guidance is personal rather than one-size-fits-all.
A laptop, a couple of documents about your business, and a professional-tier AI subscription for the month of the programme — around £80, which you arrange yourself. We send a setup pack two weeks ahead and run a clinic from 08:30 on the first morning so nobody starts behind.
If you would like to weigh it up before deciding — whether it is right for your business, your sector, where you are starting from — make an enquiry. The full programme guide comes straight back, and a considered reply follows within two working days.
A confirmation is on its way to your inbox, with a link to the full programme guide. Someone will be in touch within two working days.
Read the programme guide →