Jon Barber Email & Phone Number

I would describe myself as 'pragmatic strategist' who loves to help clients stretch their horizons in terms of 'the art of the possible' and then to deliver real, tangible value from those big ideas.I studied maths and computer modelling at University. My thesis was a flight simulator for boomerangs - which worked fine, once I remembered to include gravity in the model!My first job was for a small company, developing Computational Fluid Dynamics software - I helped design the space shuttle, the channel tunnel and the first artificial human hearts .. fascinating stuff.In the late eighties, I helped to found a start-up software company - way before it became a cool and trendy thing to do during the dot.com boom! We did well, growing to over 50 people before I left and went over to the 'dark side', entering into the world of large corporations.The 'dark side' must have held some appeal, as I worked as a technical architect and program manager, before spending the last twenty years as a business and strategy consultant with PwC and IBM. I have specialised in digital channels and the integration of the physical and digital customer experience across both the front and back-offices.I feel that I have been 'preaching the gospel' of customer-centricity for many years and that the rest of the world has finally caught up and been converted to this religion. Nearly all of the clients I now work with have 'an outstanding customer experience' (or something similar) on the first page of their business strategy. My focus is on turning this high-level aspiration into something that is concrete and deliverable and determining the tangible financial value that will be delivered as a result.Increasingly, we are seeing how a combination of rapidly emerging technologies, Agile delivery techniques, Design Thinking and rapid prototyping is blurring of the boundaries between strategy and execution. As a digital strategist, with an earlier life as a technologist, I have embraced these developments gaining accreditations as a scrummaster, Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) practitioner and Enterprise Design Thinker. I also work extensively with organisations to develop digital operating models that enable them to execute their strategies in a flexible and agile fashion.Today, helping innovative organisations to exploit the opportunities presented by the fourth industrial revolution is just as fascinating to me as eliminating turbulence within an artificial aorta was to my younger self!