Many of my colleagues have gotten messages on linked in from consulting firms where they basically offer $300 for an hour long phone call with a client. I'm not sure how they're getting picked, but they all have PhDs and papers in the field the client is interested in.
I definitely think there's something to the idea of making the discovery process easy. I would pay to chat with a doctor about a bunch of things that aren't related to my personal health, and to someone who works on industrial electrolyzers, just off the top of my head.
Totally depends on the industry. I've been called on as an expert a few times by GLG which seems to do this as a service https://glginsights.com but I don't think they cover everything and there are other companies in more specific verticals like tech support for companies (https://www.electric.ai/)
I was contacted a few times by consulting firms to provide expert opinion to hedge funds and other investment business. But generally they didn't want to solve a particular problem, just an overview of some industry or technology.
For more specific stuff, I think that's sort of what AWS IQ does in their domain.
> I would pay for proper help
Out of curiosity, how much?