The Institute for Experiments with Business (Ibex) is an emergent research entity, situated within the FoAM network. Its exploratory purpose is to collect, conduct and report on experiments in and with business, including new and wild takes on organisational staples such as budgets, contracts, organisational form, business mentoring and the business plan. This work emerges out of conversations between Kate Rich and FoAM Earth, and draws upon the wider FoAM network as a community of knowledge, practice, infrastructure, deals, encounter, experimentation and exchange.

A primary research interest for the Institute is the exploration of grey areas. This investigation will include observing, provoking and analysing grey area practices, within the FoAM network and along various vectors (legal/regulatory, financial, spatial, constitutional, jurisdictional). The intention is to distinguish between grey areas engaged with inadvertently or defensively, and those ventured into consciously, with curiosity, as a process of research. This approach identifies certain kinds of grey areas as more than sites of disabling risk or havens of disproportionate privilege, but also potentially fertile spaces where different things can be tested and grow, and where new claims for cultural legitimacy could be made.