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Expertise

Multidisciplinary background spanning Design, Business and Digital Innovation

Summary

A highly-driven innovation consultant & expertise lead, trained in strategic innovation, design, international business & management for design, with 12+ years’ cross-industry experience (including start-up new tech R&D) successfully managing innovation strategy from initial concept through to market delivery. Adept at creative & critical-analytical thinking with ability to wear different hats whilst inspiring teams using cross-disciplinary tools & methodologies. Guides Fortune500 corporate teams in design thinking, lean startup, qualitative research methods, insight generation, business model innovation, digital transformation, service design methodologies (among others) to find the right problems to solve, driving new business models & growth opportunities.

Multi-T-shaped

It’s cliché, but I’m what’s referred to by IDEO as a T shaped skills person. I have a breadth of knowledge across several disciplines in design, business, innovation (top of the T) plus a depth of expertise and experience in my specialisations (vertical parts of the T). This allows me to link-up different perspectives and ideas from various specialisations and helps cross-functional teamwork by understanding wider backgrounds with more empathy for the innovation process.

Hard skills:

  • Design Management
  • Design Thinking
  • Service Design
  • Lean Startup
  • Design Sprints
  • Innovation Accelerators
  • Business Model Innovation
  • Innovation Research
  • Design Research
  • CX/UI/UX Design
  • Business & Management
  • Design Strategy
  • Strategic Management
  • Innovation Strategy

Soft skills:

  • Critical, analytical mindset
  • Strategic planning
  • Creative thinking
  • Team working
  • Reliability

What is my unique value?

My unique value is in being a multidisciplinary thinker and doer (not just specialised in one area of the design and innovation process) but with a complete perspective from user research and requirements gathering, designing, prototyping and technical implementation; to understanding the wider business needs, environment and requirements; and to the management of the innovation process and strategic thinking to bring ideas and creativity to market with future strategic innovation planning.
  • Initial planning
  • User research
  • Design implementation and prototyping
  • Understanding the business environment and requirements
  • Managing innovation commercialisation and future strategy

How do I apply these multidisciplinary skills to my work?

DESIGN

  • In how to put the user at the centre of the design process to analyse unmet needs and problems by carrying-out user and consumer research requirements.
  • Wire-framing, prototyping and evaluating new concepts rapidly.
  • Implementing and delivering design solutions technically.
  • Gathering further user insights for future design iterations.
  • Understanding the design context, consumer culture and semiotic meanings of design.
  • Speaking the language of design.

BUSINESS

  • By understanding the macro and micro business environments and applying the appropriate strategic business research tools.
  • A core understanding of organisational theories and literature.
  • Development of appropriate commercial value propositions for business based upon design and market research.
  • By communicating across design and business and aligning design strategy with business strategy requirements.
  • Facilitating close collaboration between design and business disciplines.
  • Speaking the language of business.

INNOVATION

  • Understanding the product lifecycle and types of innovation created (incremental/radical, open/closed, diffusion, architectural/component, internal/external etc).
  • Sustaining future sources of innovation for future product iterations.
  • Understanding sources of knowledge for continued and sustained innovation and emergence of dominant designs.
  • How creating new cultural meaning through design is key to innovation success.
  • How digital technologies affect innovation sources through the erosion of boundaries and scope of firms.
  • How porous firm boundaries and capabilities are key to innovation sources internally.

Selection of clients:

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“

Mike was the chairman and a speaker at our 2nd Design Thinking for Business Innovation Summit. The audience found his presentation very relevant, insightful and practical. He received one of the highest overall ratings. Mike was an amazing chairman; he is funny, proactive and able to set up a very welcoming, friendly atmosphere at the event. Thanks to Mike’s very professional approach and cheerful personality our event was a great success. I would definitely recommend Mike as a keynote speaker and chairman.

Olga GalkaVolanthan Group
“

Mike delivered remote design thinking training to staff. Throughout the training, he demonstrated a breadth and depth of knowledge that helped all attending in applying skills and understanding how it would apply to them in their roles. His level of expertise and knowledge of the innovation process was great, and he has certainly inspired us to apply these methods in our day-to-day work, and we were already applying these by the end of the course. The training was evaluated continually and Mike adapting the approaches to meet the needs within the group.

Zoe GardinerSenior Product Manager at Jisc
“

My personal experience when working with Mike has been positive and inspiring. Mike keeps the customer us very well on track what is going to happen and what needs to be done. He has a good overview of things and he is clearly good in delegating the tasks to other consultants and ensuring that things get done. He also do challenge the customer / participants to think outside of the box, which is not easy always and may feel challenging at the time but his way of doing that typically helps to understand that there are even more ways to think or do things. As a person he has a good (British) sense of humor and has a great natural stage presence, even for bigger audiences. I have enjoyed working with Mike and can recommend his expertise and way of working to any other colleague or stakeholder in my network.

Santeri HeinonenSenior Manager, Global Talent Development at Valmet
“

Mike has applied himself successfully to many disciplines in his role as Digital Innovation Strategist at Titan Reality and adopts new skills and technologies with enthusiasm. He is a pleasure to work with and demonstrates attention to detail, is always focused on the task in hand and has a thorough understanding of innovation and product development.

Jim SimonsSoftware Architect
“

I’ve had the pleasure of collaborating closely with Mike over the course of my time at Board of Innovation. We travelled across Europe together, facilitating workshops for various corporate clients around the topics of design thinking, lean startup & business model innovation. Safe to say that my interactions with Mike were some of the most fruitful of my career to date. Mike’s breadth of experience in the domains of design, innovation & technology is unparalleled. He is a walking library of frameworks, tools & methodologies who possesses the unique ability to flawlessly apply his theoretical knowledge to complex business environments. Besides being a deep topic expert, Mike is a gifted speaker whose contagious communication style has, more than once, ‘touched’ those that he is working with, be it C-level execs or executional teams. Mike, to me, is the embodiment of a ‘growth mindset’, relentlessly curious and continuously hungry for feedback and I am very grateful to have had the chance to be mentored by him in the early onset stages of my career. I highly recommend working with Mike without any reservations. He is undoubtedly an asset to any modern organization.

Lucas TamborynInnovation Consultant
“

It is always amazing to see new talent with a desire for innovation and design emerging from academia and finding its way to industry. This is the case of Mike, whose management methodologies and new product development skills are outstanding and very desirable for any kind of industry.

Dr Sergio Castillo GarciaHead of Electronics
“

I worked with Mike for several years within a multi-disciplinary team of software developers, research scientists, designers and engineers and had the pleasure of seeing him work seamlessly across design, business, management and innovation roles in the startup environment. I was particularly impressed by his wealth of knowledge across the design process, backup-up by a strong strategic business mindset as well as his ability to get people on board with new creative ideas from different disciplines. Mike is someone with strong ambition, is self-motivated and would be a tremendous asset to any team.

Vassilis ValavanisDSP Engineer & Researcher