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Valerie Hannon and Matthew Horne lead the executive team as Managing Partners and are supported by a group of Partners comprising Douglas Archibald, John Craig, David Jackson and Gareth Wynne. Valerie Hannon - Managing Partner
Valerie is Managing Partner of The Innovation Unit. She leads the work on Education and Children's Services, and has a strong interest in the work in local government and the third (non-profit) sector. Valerie has been a Director of Education in a large county Local Authority (Derbyshire). She has worked in a broad range of Local Authorities, and was an advisor to the Local Government Association. Before joining local government, she was a senior research fellow in the University of Sheffield and led on education policy for the Equal Opportunities Commission. Her teaching experience was in secondary schools. She is a former USA Harkness Fellow. Valerie was a member of the National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education, which produced the report All Our Futures (1999, DfES/DCMS). She subsequently acted as advisor to the then DfES (now DCSF), the QCA and to the Creative Partnerships programme, to promote creativity in learning, teaching and leadership. She has worked independently with a range of Local Authorities, UK public agencies, and overseas education systems interested in building innovative capacity. She is a regular contributor to international conferences and seminars on these themes, working for both the OECD and ANZSOG (Australia and New Zealand School of Government). Valerie is a Trustee of two third sector organisations working in the field of creativity and learning. Matthew Horne - Managing Partner
Matthew is Managing Partner of The Innovation Unit. He leads work on strategy and influencing government policy. His interests include innovation in education and children's services, and adult social care. He has worked with The Innovation Unit in various ways since 2003. Matthew helped set up and lead Innovation Exchange, our flagship programme for innovators from the third sector, and the Innovation Catalyst - a programme of innovation support to Local Authorities. He advises the Cabinet Office Strategy Unit on public service improvement, and has previously worked in the Strategy Unit in what is now the Department for Children, Schools and Families. Matthew has experience as a service designer in public services - having worked for RED at the Design Council, Participle, and as a Senior Researcher at DEMOS where he ran their programme on public service innovation. He has worked on a range of issues including drug and alcohol misuse, care and social relationships in old age, school leadership, police leadership, prisons, and futures thinking in education. Douglas Archibald - Partner and Knowledge Manager
Douglas gained over five years experience in managing large-scale organisational change as a Manager in Accenture's Human Performance Practice in London. He worked with leading global organisations in the Telco, Media, Energy, Oil and Chemicals sectors on projects covering strategic change, culture change, eLearning and knowledge management. This included a rather exciting ‘sabbatical' year spent in the London Dot.Com Launch Centre in 2001. Douglas left Accenture in 2003 to explore his interest in Organisational Learning and Knowledge Management. His first major assignment was to lead and develop the Knowledge and Innovation Network (www.ki-network.org) at Warwick Business School which, thanks to his vision and energy, is now one of the worlds leading organizational networks on Knowledge Management and Innovation. He has since worked with a number of organisations -predominantly in the public sector - to develop and implement effective KM Strategies. His recent clients included United Nations Development Program, Office of Government Commerce and the Improvement and Development Agency. More recently, he has spent an increasing focus on the role of networks and Communities of Practice to support the spread of good and innovative practice. This led to the groundbreaking project for Warwick Business School with Dr. Richard McDermott, which benchmarked the effectiveness of over 50 Communities of Practice in 10 leading global organizations, identifying nine key factors in high performing communities. Since early 2007 Douglas has spent much of his time working with The Innovation Unit to develop appropriate Knowledge Management Strategies to support the aim of spreading of innovative education practices across the school system through networks and communities. He is now a partner at The Innovation Unit and, among other things, is involved in the development of an Open Source Alliance for 21st Century Education to support this aim. Douglas holds a BA (Hons) in Business Studies from Edinburgh University and an MA in Organisation Studies with Distinction from Warwick Business School. He has published a number of articles on Networks and Communities of Practice, the latest of which is in the Nov/Dec 2008 issue of KM Review. John Craig - Partner and Director - Innovation Exchange
John is Director of Innovation Exchange, which supports innovation in the third sector. The Exchange helps innovators in the third sector and commissioners of public services to identify opportunities for innovation, connect around them and collaborate to realise their potential. The Innovation Exchange has two areas of focus; excluded young people and independent living. Prior to this, John worked as a policy advisor at the Cabinet Office, both at the Office of the Third Sector, leading their work on innovation, and at the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit. During this time he contributed to Partnership in Public Services, which frames the role of the third sector in service delivery and worked and managed the relationship between the Office of the Third Sector and DfES. He has also worked as a senior researcher at Demos, the independent think-tank, where he focused on policy related to communities and public services. He is the author of Schools Out, which examines extended schools, Start with People, which looks at the role of community organisations and Production Values: Futures for professionalism. John has an MA in Education Policy from the Institute of Education. He has previously worked as a researcher at both the Home Office and the Department for Education and Employment. John is a former resident and trustee of Toynbee Hall, a settlement in East London and a former Vice-President of Oxford University Student Union. He holds a first-class degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics. David Jackson - Partner
David has also led the development of the Innovation Unit's Applied Next Practice work - programmes which utilise learning from Next Practice innovation to design, with Local Authorities or school collaboratives, unique solutions to significant local challenges and aspirations. To date these have included, in various combinations, large-scale system change, approaches to locality transformation, integrated service implementation, community engagement and mobilisation, system leadership, multi-school trusts and new forms of governance. For the last 10 years David has led large-scale programmes supporting leadership development, system leadership approaches and the implementation of school-to-school collaborative practices. In 2000, he was appointed as NCSL's first Director of Research and School Improvement. In that role he oversaw the development of New Visions, now the national program for England's annual cohort of 4,000 new headteachers. In 2002 he became the Director of NCSL's Networked Learning Group and a Strategic Director of the College. The Group's best known programme involved the support of 134 Networked Learning Communities (1,550 schools) across England over a five year period. It also promoted innovation in leadership development design, collaborative leadership approaches, network leadership, and models of brokerage and capacity-building across Local Authorities. David began teaching in 1971. For 14 years, until 2000, he was headteacher of Sharnbrook Upper School and Community College, at that time one of the country's most innovative and successful schools. David has taught on Leadership Masters programmes at the Universities of Cambridge and Nottingham, and on Cambridge's International MPhil programme in Educational Reform and Teacher Development. He has published widely on a range of themes - leadership, school improvement, innovation, enquiry, student voice and Networked Learning Communities - and has supported school and system improvement programmes both in the UK and internationally. Gareth Wynne - Partner and Company Secretary
Gareth has worked with The Innovation Unit since 2002, when it was part of the former DfES, and he was responsible for operationalising the start-up of the Unit. In 2006, he became Company Secretary. Prior to this, Gareth was a Managing Consultant with Cap Gemini Ernst & Young where he worked with a diverse range of national and international organisations (including Boots, Virgin Megastores, GlaxoSmithKline and Ocado) focusing on developing customer-centric solutions to address organisation / business needs. He has brought his experiences and insights from working in a wide range of other sectors (eg healthcare and retail pharmacy, book publishing, pharmaceutical, drinks manufacturing, e-grocery, aviation repair, entertainment, financial services and travel) to bear on the work and activities of The Innovation Unit. Particular foci included: project planning and management; designing and implementing new business processes; risk management; stakeholder management; business case development; financial analysis of opportunities; workshop facilitation; supply chain analysis, implementation of major IT systems acting as both expert business user and user acceptance testing manager. Gareth has an MBA, with Distinction, from Warwick Business School. The outcomes of his research project on how main Board Directors of FTSE 200 companies are selected, prepared and developed was reported in The Financial Times and on Radio 4's Today Programme amongst others. He is a Member of the Institute of Business Consultancy, a PRINCE2TM Practitioner and a Fellow of the RSA. |
David is an Innovation Unit Partner. Previously he was a Senior Associate, in which role he was Lead Consultant to the Next Practice in System Leadership programme. Working also with the National College for School Leadership, this work introduced new approaches to leadership and governance for school collaboratives, multi-service provision and locality working.
Gareth oversees resource and contract management, analyses business development and project investment opportunities as well as leading on overall project and risk management across the Unit. In addition, he is the Company Secretary for The Innovation Unit Limited.