Delivering Innovation Impact
"More than 90% of executives are dissatisfied with their innovation performance."
Making innovation better
Our purpose at Innovate21 is to make innovation better, in order to enable organisations to deliver innovation impact. Not do innovation, but to embed innovation as a strategic imperative that drives and delivers the future they need.
Our clients come from multiple industries, including energy, finance, technology and the third sector, benefitting from our trusted and proven approach that delivers sustainable results.
What is the big issue?
Innovation as a management discipline has been around for at least 40 years.
BUT…
Organisations find it hard to build systematic innovation capability and demonstrate innovation value and impact.
A 2015 McKinsey survey found that 94% of executives were dissatisfied with innovation performance.
What's the problem?
Innovation is difficult to measure, manage and create a true systematic impact.
WHY?
Idea-heavy: Too big a focus on the more creative front-end of ideation phase
What’s the point?: Organisations unsure of what the role of innovation is
No process: Innovation not being approached in a systematic, structured way
Innovation Island: Innovation not aligning or linking to the corporate strategic direction
Not in the DNA: Innovation not embedded as a sustainable organisational capability
No goal: There is seldomly a clear set of objectives for innovation
Bad metrics: Innovation being incorrectly measured and managed.
Our Better Innovation Framework

Our Better Innovation Framework has three stages:
- Strategy – Embed innovation into the future strategy
- Operational – Enable the organisation to innovate
- Manage – Build the culture and measure the impact
Within the stages, our framework has six elements:
Embed the Imperative for change
Develop the Innovation Ambition
Execute the Innovation Program
Build Processes and Tools
Measure and Monitor Progress
Creating the Innovative Organisation
So what’s the Better Innovation approach that we at Innovate21 do? We have three phases 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.

Strategy
We embed innovation into an organisation’s future strategy by:
- Creating the imperative for change with executive leadership
- Determining the innovation ambition to create success

Operational
We enable the organisation to innovate by:
- Executing the innovation program
- Building processes and tools to support innovation

Manage
We build the culture and measure the impact by:
- Measuring and monitoring performance & progress
- Creating an engaged culture and innovative organisation
Who do we work with?
We work with companies that believe in better.
Companies that have a belief system; they are ambitious for themselves as an organisation, but also want to create a better world.
Innovate21 really thrives working with executive leaders, strategy leaders and innovation leads. Leaders who see their world and want to make it better.
We are not theorists, but experienced innovators who have led innovation for many decades. That’s why Innovate21 is trusted.
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.
Our Team
Innovate21 can call on a team of experienced innovators. Each team member has their own unique perspectives and innovation stories and have the scars to prove it.
We have successfully innovated in many different industry sectors, from Energy and Manufacturing to Retail and Finance, giving us unique perspectives to support your organisation.

Harvey Wade
Founder & Managing Director
Harvey is an experienced innovation leader who drives business impact from transformation and change programs. He knows what it takes to create, drive and sustain improvement in organisations, changing cultures to increase engagement and buy-in at all levels, enabling better performance and results.
A regular conference speaker, award-winning blogger and contributor on MBA and Exec education programmes, his practical innovation experience spans many industry sectors. The problems are different, but his approach, tools and methods are universally applicable, delivering value to everyone he works with.
Contact: harvey@innovate21.co
Online Services
Innovate21 partners with the Strategy Tools Academy to provide a series of fully virtual courses that build strategic, transformative and innovation capabilities. Either take the courses directly or use them in a guided strategy engagement with Innovate21.
What our clients say about us
Innovate21 is a must have partner if you are boosting the innovation DNA of your organization or company.
Driving innovation in a complex corporate environment is a fascinating role, and Innovate21 had a great impact in this area. Their thoughtful approach, helped by many years experience of creating a culture of innovation, helped me develop a new perspective. Their expertise provided a valuable framework to build from, and I greatly enjoyed working with them.
My team and I were very impressed with Innovate21's thorough approach, ability to work in an ambiguous and changing environment and drive to deliver the work within the expected timescales. Their work will enable us to develop our innovation capabilities, creating the opportunity for a more innovative future.
Absolutely loved my time learning from Harvey, his experience was exactly what we needed from our latest and toughest assignment. Thoroughly recommended.
Harvey is an accomplished innovation management professional who I have called upon for advice a number of times when facing an intractable problem. It is rare to find someone with as much international experience in the innovation game. Such exposure to cognitive diversity gives him a unique lens on the evolving world of a 21st century skill set and how best to democratise innovation.
Case study

EDF’s UK Innovation Centre, Blue Lab, wanted to create a set of training materials that would increase innovation skills and capabilities in both Blue Lab and the wider EDF organisation. Following an initial discovery phase to ascertain needs, we created fifteen innovation modules, which can be consumed individually or combined to make a more extensive offering. The modules covered setting innovation strategy and design thinking practices, through to prototyping methods and idea implementation. Each module was tailored to EDF’s specific needs and piloted with the organisation to test its effectiveness.
Innovative Thoughts
- Creating a Better Innovation Culture 26th October 2020No matter how good the strategy, you ignore culture at your peril. Innovation, at the end of the day, is people-centric. People who are passionately dissatisfied, who care enough to change give you the chance of having better innovation.
- Better Innovation Execution 16th October 2020Stop talking about innovation and start doing it. Establishing a strategic foundation is the start to innovation success. But how do you execute those ambitions and make better innovation a reality?
- A “why” is needed to innovate better 9th October 2020Innovation is not an outcome, it's an enabler. Innovation must bring value and make things better. But if you want impactful outcomes from innovation, you need to know the "why"?