Case Studies: Navigating Innovation Leadership
Ridge Walking: Navigating Narrow Margins for Success
Consumer Goods Leadership Team: Trust on the Edge
The Challenge: A highly innovative leadership team found themselves on a narrow ridge—increased friction was threatening their £billion product roadmap just as they faced a rigorous financial review.
The Navigation: Using the Innovation Leadership Map as our compass, each team member identified their individual patterns before a two-hour micro-workshop. This "first-aid" approach quickly diagnosed the emotional dynamics causing the friction.
The Breakthrough: Six months later, insights from that brief intervention continue to guide decisions, revitalized the product roadmap, and built resilience that carried them through the financial review successfully.
Ethical AI CEO: Finding Her Voice
The Challenge: The CEO of an ethical AI company was stuck on a leadership ridge—unable to express a clear vision or give direct feedback without taking customer data as personal critique.
The Navigation: Psychodynamic evaluation techniques served as a diagnostic compass, revealing behavioural patterns established early in her career that were now limiting her leadership effectiveness.
The Summit: With a redesigned leadership self-image and new engagement techniques, she now leads her industry niche with increased resilience and a clear organizational vision.
Multiple Peaks: Managing Portfolio Challenges
Global Technology Consultancy: Unifying Competing Philosophies
The Challenge: Multiple peaks of competing innovation philosophies, positioning, and ways of working across a massive global consultancy created confusion rather than capability.
The Base Camp Strategy: A first-principles innovation training program created collaborative learning environments, working with real-world challenges across Meta and GSK partnerships.
The Infrastructure: After three years and hundreds of participants, the program maintains a 90+ NPS and is consistently oversubscribed, becoming the unified approach they needed across all operating units.
Financial Services: Building Leadership Bridges
The Challenge: Mid-career professionals faced multiple peaks—transitioning from individual contributor to business leader while maintaining technical excellence and entrepreneurial thinking.
The Bridge-Building: A comprehensive leadership development program, including specialized coaching modules, created pathways between technical skills and leadership capabilities.
The Infrastructure: Achieved industry-leading 96% retention in a 30-40% churn industry, with above-average performance reviews and multiple new innovation initiatives launched.
New Dawn: From Stalled to Breakthrough
Digital Product Organization: Sunrise After the Storm
The Challenge: A 20-year heritage company faced unprecedented revenue decline and downsizing post-pandemic—their innovation engine had stalled.
The Long Ascent: Two years of coaching the CEO and COO provided space to reflect, diagnose, ideate, and rehearse organizational revitalization while navigating sensitive restructuring.
The Dawn: 2024 brought positive revenue growth and doubled headcount—a complete turnaround from near-collapse to thriving innovation.
Creative Organization: Finding Identity in the Mist
The Challenge: A globally admired organization emerged from pandemic fog with a fragmented sense of identity, unable to launch new ventures despite a strong culture.
The Compass Work: Social-analytic research revealed hidden assumptions that employees feared speaking out would threaten their collegial culture.
The Breakthrough: Collaborative identity development work restored trust, authenticity, and engagement, enabling both increased impact and employee satisfaction.
Mountain Tools: Individual Development
NGO Strategic Leader: Building Resilience Gear
The Challenge: A strategic leader moved into operational oversight of multiple regional functions across three continents amid board conflict and masculine industry culture.
The Training: Weekly, then bi-weekly coaching sessions over 12 months developed new self-evaluation practices, capabilities, and operating models while testing organizational changeability.
The Summit: Their €100m budget was renewed for 5 years, 24 initiatives landed, and the organization became an industry exemplar.
Design/Technology Leadership: Growing Stronger Sustainably
The Challenge: CEO and COO of a growing product company needed to professionalize without becoming "too corporate"—dependency and anxiety were blocking honest conversations.
The Equipment Upgrade: One-to-one coaching combined with team observation, cultural assessment, and communication training refreshed their working methods.
The Results: $5m to $10m revenue growth, outperforming peers, increased retention, and producing their best products in company history.
Infrastructure Building: Systemic Solutions
Education/Creative Training: Building Learning Bridges
The Challenge: A well-known gap between creative education and real-world capabilities left entering talent unprepared and employers frustrated.
The Bridge Construction: Partnering with Future Learn, designed action learning programs combining theoretical excellence from top schools (Central St Martins, UCL, Cambridge, Harvard) with practical empathy and design capabilities.
The Infrastructure: Created pathways that give young talent confidence and capabilities while providing employers with highly sought-after practical skills.
Asian Academic Organizations: Cross-Border Infrastructure
The Challenge: Identified gaps in acquiring deep empathy and human-centred design practices due to the separation of design, strategy, and commercial practices.
The Bridge Design: Nine-week integrated innovation program combined first-principle theories with applied storytelling and task-based applications.
The Result: Western and Eastern capabilities are unified to elevate globally capable creative talent who can work across borders.
Each journey is unique, but the principles of navigation, proper equipment, and strong infrastructure remain constant. What mountain are you facing?