I love innovation. We think innovation is great at Innovate21, but we know it has its pitfalls and it doesn’t always work. We believe that innovation needs to be better.So what’s the Better Innovation approach that we at Innovate21 do? We have three core elements in our approach; moving from diagnostic to discover your truth, determining what areas to focus on and then applying our suite of services that enable innovation impact. When you are doing Better Innovation, you solve the common challenges that are faced in innovation. You have better focus on where innovation is most valuable. Your outcomes are better, they are more successful and sustainable, and therefore, measurable. You get the innovation impact where your organisation most needs it.If you are currently thinking that your innovation efforts and results need to be better, it’s not making the impact you’d hoped for, Innovate21 enables you to make it better.

I host the Camelot Innovation Hour, a monthly live webinar that seeks to build the insurance industry's innovative capabilities and curiosity. We've had guest from energy, technology, water, food, rail, FMCG, authors and, of course, innovative insurers. Camelot is a network of independent consultants who are ex-C-Suite Execs/Senior Managers who have all been there and done it in top organisations, mainly in insurance but others as well. We have formed a strong and diverse network to provide help and services to each other and importantly to companies who would benefit from our expert assistance.

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The 6 ‘I’s® focuses on a human-centred purposeful approach to innovation, blending design thinking tools and organisational development, with a unique, individual and team innovation strengths profiling tool. Discover how to increase innovation impact in you, your team and your organisation using the 6 'I's model and mindsets. Ask me!

Worked with Ninety as an Innovation Lead - bringing my innovation experience and insurance experience together to benefit customers, including Hiscox, Beazley, 1st Central, and helping to eradicate extreme poverty as we innovated.

Enabling Cisco leaders create impact through the application of innovation. Working at strategic level, advising leaders, aligning innovation outcomes with business objectives. Providing complete range of innovation services, from insight to implementation, accelerating organisation performance, achieving their most ambitious goals.- Established Innovation VC-based Funding Board to accelerate disruptive innovation- Increased the innovation performance of Cisco Services teams across globe- Led Smart City co-innovation discovery workshops to develop Services for cities- Designed and facilitated 'Leading for Innovation' workshops for global leaders- Created training and tools to increase innovation capability and knowledge- Established an Innovation Maturity Model to assess & benchmark performance of Cisco orgs- Speaker at ISPIM (Porto), The Intrapreneur Conference (NY), Intrapreneurship Conference (London), FEI Europe (London), Chief Innovation Officer Summit (London) & author of Cisco blogs.

Worked with multi-national organisations including Citi, BP, Scottish Water, J&J, DBS, RAC (WA), Cap Gemini, Viacom18 and AGL Energy to create desired outcomes by aligning business drivers with innovation strategy. Through the provision of engaging innovation processes, running and supporting challenges and advising on the engagement of organisation's cultures, I drove client success establishing sustainable successful innovation programmes.Key Achievements:- Engaging with worldwide workforces and customers to capture ideas that solve and overcome their key challenges; delivering an estimated $500k - $30m per challenge.- Experienced working with crowds from every continent, including Australia, Colombia, Hungary, India, Israel, Scandinavia, Singapore, UK, USA, EMEA-wide and world-wide- Developed Innovation Maturity Model that underpins the basis of client assessments- Creation of workshops to build knowledge and practically train clients in ideation methodology, designing innovation contests and obtaining sponsor engagement

Role Overview: Oversight and the development of the employee innovation programme that delivered more than 35,000 submitted ideas, with over 30,000 those ideas implemented, leading to an annualised bottom-line benefit that exceeded £14m the first five years of launch. This performance led to Allianz Insurance plc being named Allianz’s Most Innovative Company in both 2010 and 2011.Key Achievements:• Created and oversaw the “ideas 2 success” programme, including management of the idea pipeline through an on-line idea management tool• Designed and introduced Team Based Innovation, a process grounded in idea management best practice, resulting in over 25,000 ideas implemented since creation in 2009. Implementation of this process involved taking innovation theory into a practical process, and training over 100 champions to train their line manager peers• Partnered with the Allianz Engineering division to develop and run a proof of concept to test and experiment if mobile technology would deliver greater workforce productivity• Designed, shaped and organised of annual Innovation Awards events at Wembley Stadium , with full sponsorship and attendance of the CEO and the board• Built and developed the 180 strong Innovation Champion community through regular communication, including conference calls, on-line forums and annual champion events• Ran company-wide idea campaigns on a range of subjects, including revenue generation, cost savings, process improvements, customer service and CSR themes

Role Overview: Responsible for the underwriting result of the SE region’s £16m SME insurance account. I had direct responsibility for improving and maintaining the technical standards of an underwriting team of 16 underwriters and the senior referral in the team. The account growth was achieved through development of broker relationships, arrangement of schemes and rollover deals. Key Achievement: Doubling the new business revenue within 3 months of starting the role and then maintenance of the high level of performance

Role Overview: Working in the Commercial Head Office, responsible for the national performance of Property Owner and Office product lines. This work was very strategic, analysing pricing and making appropriate rating adjustments, amending and improving product wordings, review of broker schemes and communicating with key sales contacts in our branch network.Key Achievement: Creation and launch of Complete Property Owner and Complete Flatowner products, receiving the “Product of the Month” accolade from Insurance Age (May 2004) This product is still much in demand today, and remains a core offering in the Allianz SME range.

Project manager for the KC21 Trust - managed projects - some highlights below:1. Mobile Youth Project - oversaw set up of H&S, Child Protection and Equal Opportunity policies2. Set up 13-15 Youth Group - Ran every Friday night in term time3. Introduced training and teaching resource to 80 schools in local area.4. Noise Project - Organised a week-end of community action work, litter picking in local secondary school, re-surfacing a children's play area, painted a skate board park and held a skate competition for local young people.

Management Trainee, West End Branch, Commercial Union (December 1996 – June 1998)Initial six months training in different departments; Personal Insurance, Claims, Commercial Underwriting and New business underwriting. A year spent learning the underwriting trade as a broker account handler in the new business sales team. Moved into a role with people responsibility as the admin team leader and an Executive Trading Executive.Property Owner Team Leader, CGU plc, London (June 1998 – September 2000)Due to the merger of CU and GA, the team leader role expanded into managing a team of 15 underwriters specialising in selling and servicing property owners insurance, responsible for meeting service and quality standards.CGU & NU then decided to merge, and I felt it was time to seek a new challenge...