Better Systems, Better Futures
For over twenty years, I’ve worked at the point where research, innovation and public purpose meet.
I’ve worked with universities, governments, funders and mission-driven organisations to help ambitious ideas create real-world change, Throughout that work I’ve come to realise there is one key factor in innovation for public good.
Innovation rarely fails for the lack of good ideas or smart people. It fails because the systems around those ideas and individuals make success harder than it needs to be.
That is why I created Crafted for the Future.
Experience
Crafted for the Future grew out of my unusual journey through the innovation landscape.
I began as an academic focused on impact, social change and complex systems, before moving into UKRI, the UK’s main public funder of research, to develop programmes that helped research make a difference beyond the university. I later became Deputy Director for Innovation, Business Engagement and Commercialisation at the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), before moving into consultancy to work more closely with organisations navigating change.
Along the way, I’ve worked with businesses, governments, universities and mission-oriented organisations to strengthen the social impact of research and innovation.
I’ve not taken the most well-travelled path through my career, but that has been one of its great strengths. It has given me a rare perspective on the rich and varied cultures, people and systems that make up our research and innovation ecosystem, and on what it takes to help good ideas move across them.
How I Work
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Systems and processes exist to help people create value, not the other way around.
Innovation is fundamentally a human system. It depends on trust, judgement, relationships, confidence and shared purpose. My work starts with the people who have to make a system work in practice, not just the process maps that describe how it should work in theory.
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When a system stops working, it is tempting to treat the visible symptoms rather than the root cause.
This is especially common in longstanding systems that were designed for one purpose but are now being stretched to do something else. I work with the people inside and around the system to understand what has changed, what is getting stuck, and what needs to be redesigned for the future.
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My goal is not to become indispensable to your organisation.
It is to leave organisations stronger than I found them, with clearer thinking, better tools, stronger relationships and more confidence to act. Good consultancy should create momentum that lasts beyond the project.
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One of the great dangers of innovation work is creating elegant structures and processes that cannot survive contact with reality.
My work is grounded in holistic, people-centred design principles. That means building systems that make sense in the boardroom, but also work for the people who have to use them, adapt them and sustain them on the ground.
Why Crafted for the Future?
The ethos of Crafted for the Future is contained within its name. Craft implies the care, patience, thoughtfulness and humanity required to create innovation, and the systems that support it.
My approach is to help people build systems that are not only fit for purpose, but built to last. That means systems flexible enough to adapt to changing circumstances, yet robust enough to stand up to scrutiny.