The increasing disparity between the research and teaching aspects of academic careers has been an area of concern in different national contexts over a number of decades. Anyone working with educational enhancement will have encountered the binary choice between research development and educational enhancement that academics are forced to make, often in favour of the former and at the expense of the latter. Consider how many staff are recruited in institutions to support researcher development as compared to those supporting teacher development. Are such staff included within permanent university structures? How would staff development budgets for teaching- and research-focussed academics compare? When investment for the enhancement of teaching is made, this often follows externally-driven political and economic agendas, and funding. As a result, academic developers are frequently concerned about the sustainability of such projects. Through a combination of serendipity and discussion, the authors have identified a business model that helps to explain such experiences, and also accept that unless structural changes at the HE sector level are addressed, the resourcing for teacher and researcher development will continue to reflect the higher importance given to research. In this article, the authors outline the model and highlight areas where further evidence is needed to confirm that the model is indeed applicable (and under what conditions). Most importantly, they speculate about the implications to be gleaned from this new perspective on the structural realities that shape the operational conditions.