Catalyst22 Wrapped: Edinburgh's first design & innovation leadership conference

What a day!

On September 29th, we welcomed design and innovation leaders from a range of sectors across the UK for Edinburgh’s first conference of its kind – Catalyst22.

It was a great opportunity for senior professionals in Customer Experience, Design, Innovation, Proposition and Product to connect and learn together. Through listening to keynote sessions by expert speakers and engaging in roundtable discussions on the challenges they face in their career, team and business, attendees were encouraged to share advice and learn practical tips from their peers.

If you missed the conference, we’ve prepared a handy recap below and you can already register your interest for next year’s event.

Register for Catalyst23

Driving Sustainable & Inclusive Innovation

We kicked off the day with Chin Ru Foo, Founder of Crew & Riot and previous Global Innovation Director at William Grant & Sons. She spoke about sustainable and inclusive innovation, highlighting the dangers of excluding consumers beyond your target market when designing for your brand, product and service, due to a lack of understanding.

Discussing sustainability in business, Chin Ru shared examples and tips from her experience in the drinks industry, including her successful launch of circular drinks reusing discarded ingredients. Her rallying call for more inclusivity was thought-provoking. She showcased examples from brand, design, product and marketing initiatives that fail to be inclusive, accessible and diverse, and contrasting those with best-in-class examples.

Our first roundtable was on the topic of Impact, where we discussed:

How to align your team’s efforts with your company's stated purpose
How to design inclusively when you have a small, less diverse team
How to get leadership to value the role of design in meeting environmental and sustainability goals

Creating Capability In Your Team

Next up we had Catherine Richards and Louise Herriot from Tesco Bank, who took us on their journey into building more design capability and growing their creative team. They explained how they identify and leverage new super powers by up-skilling their team members and shared their advice on giving Design more influence in the business.

The following roundtable discussion was on Building Capability, including:

How to find the right mix of multidisciplinary vs specialist roles in a team
How to recruit the best talent and keep them engaged
How to find the right balance between in-house and outsourced/freelance talent, including what makes sense in today’s climate

Leading Your Team Into The Future

Joanna Howes from The Change Creators and our CreateFuture Founder & Managing Director Jessica Mullen had a fireside chat about leadership now and in the future. They shared some great provocations and stressed the importance of authenticity and vulnerability as a leader, as well as checking in with yourself to dig deeper when you feel lost in the weeds.

This fuelled great conversations for our next roundtable on Leadership, discussing:

The value of leadership coaching: How to find a coach, is it worth it, and how to convince your organisation to pay for it
How to spot and support when a team member is ready for a leadership position
The questions to ask yourself when you feel overwhelmed and burned out

The Power of Brand

Dave Ward, our Founder & Creative Director then discussed the understated value of brand in innovation and the role it can play in building lasting connections with audiences. He outlined how we sometimes focus so much on being frictionless that we forget about the power of creating emotions and memorable moments that stand out and delight audiences.

Creating a Culture of Innovation

Hanna Kops from Transport for London closed the day with an insightful presentation about her team culture. She made a case for embracing serendipity, tinkering and detail in your design practice, pairing back design when it's the right route to take for the user.

Our final roundtable discussion was about Innovation Culture, where we discussed:

How to measure the impact of ’innovation’
How to foster an innovation culture that feels natural and provides real value to the business
How to balance delivering today versus designing for the future

At the end of the conference, our Strategy Director Nathan Fulwood asked how many people made a new valuable connection during the day that they’d be following up on, and the entire room put up their hands!

This was the first time we put an event like this together and we couldn’t be happier with how successful the day was. Thank you to our speakers, the CreateFuture team and the attendees who came ready to discuss and candidly share the challenges they’re facing with peers from other organisations.

Don’t miss out! Join us at next year’s event by registering your interest below.

Register for Catalyst23