Abigail Hird Email & Phone Number

Glasgow, Gb

Defankle is an innovation consultancy with expertise in system-aware development, collaboration and community building, inclusive technology and process planning and management. We help organisations innovate responsibly and profitably.

Design for Growth (DFG) is an Innovate UK (IUK) Business Growth initiative focusing on bespoke support to accelerate business growth through design. DFG is accessible to SMEs as part of the IUK Business Growth wrap-around support offer.

We drive social, economic and environmental impact from research, development and innovation. We work with all actors across the public, private and third sectors - from funders to academic entrepreneurs, senior leaders to network managers, problem owners and problem solvers - to maximise the return on investment from outstanding research, technology and insight across the full spectrum of academic disciplines and technology platforms. Coming soon to an innovation ecosystem near you, our brand new digital KE platform IDA!

Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom

Teaching Innovation Management related subjects to MBA, Post Grad Business School students and Post Grad Engineering students.

Cranfield, England, United Kingdom

Supervision of Supply Chain MSc thesis projects.

Leading the creation, development and growth of a diverse community of designers, founders, manufacturers, investors, academics, funders and support agencies with a view to helping hardware developers navigate the design to manufacture journey. Providing practical advice, mentoring and support and informing public policy on innovation, manufacturing and hardware development.

Enhancing the impact of the highly innovative COVID-19 fast response programme by leading community building - bringing together cohorts and facilitating connections and collaborations across a range technology and sector areas aligned with pandemic recovery.Supporting projects with identifying opportunities (funding, markets, partners) and creating links to potential collaborators.

Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom

Leading programmes of collaborative research, Knowledge Exchange and teaching relating to Design and Manufacturing Management.

Coordination of diverse design and manufacturing related research activities, leading Knowledge Exchange projects, lecturing.

Glasgow, United Kingdom

A range of Research, Knowledge Exchange and Teaching duties relating to systems engineering, information management, design management, planning and predictive modelling.

Leeds, United Kingdom

A four-year secondment in DePuy’s Leeds Design office formed the context for an Engineering Doctorate project sponsored by DePuy Orthopaedics. The project saw the development of a novel method for forecasting resource demand and project duration in complex and uncertain project environments. This method has been developed specifically to support planning design and similar activities characterised by uncertainty. The differentiating aspect is that this method can be applied contexts which do not have an abundance of legacy project data (a prerequisite for other forecasting methods).

Harbin, China

Investigating the limitations of Electrical Discharge Machining.

Post Graduate Certificate, Academic Practice

Post Graduate Certificate, Operational Research

(The maths behind decision making)

Eng. Doctorate, Systems Engineering

A Systems Approach to Resource Planning in New Product Development. Resulted in a new forecasting method for uncertain and complex.

M. Eng, Product Design Engineering

B. Eng, Product Design With Motorsport