In Collaboration
Pattern x Innovation SuperNetwork
ACCEPTING THE CHALLENGE
Sarah Cox is a professional innovator and, as the Challenge Programme lead for Innovation SuperNetwork, her expertise is helping people in the North East tackle some of the biggest issues facing the region, and it involves a lot of collaboration and community-building.
Words by Arlen Pettitt
Photography by Christopher Owens
“Innovation is hard,” Sarah Cox tells me early in our conversation, “it always takes longer and costs more than you think.”
“And if you really care about it,” she continues, “it can be really challenging personally, and as an organisation, to go on that journey because you’re going to get things wrong.”
Innovation SuperNetwork (ISN) is delivering Challenge North Tyne in partnership with the North East LEP. Sarah is clearly one of those people who cares about innovation, and as the programme lead for this progressive open innovation project, she’s in a position to do something about it…
“Our missions are always geared towards an area of real need”
Cox has been with the Innovation SuperNetwork since the middle of 2020, having previously worked as an innovation consultant after undertaking research at the University of St Andrews, where her focus was understanding how collaborative innovation can open up new business opportunities.
Her work at ISN, brings her expertise to businesses in the North East, helping them develop solutions for some of the biggest problems facing the region.
“Our missions are always geared towards an area of real need,” Sarah explains, “broadly underpinning missions currently in Challenge North Tyne is that we’ve got an ageing population and we’re not adequately addressing their needs. These problems can cut across a whole range of sectors of society, and commerce and community. And also, we need to enable a just transition to net zero when globally we are behind on all fronts.”
Challenge North Tyne is funded by the North of Tyne Combined Authority, and works with a set of partners or ‘Challenge Supporters’ including Northumbrian Water, NEPIC, and the Academic Health Science Network.
“We’ll get a broad idea from our funder,” Sarah says, “on where the areas of priority are. Then it's our goal to get key partners on board. We’ll think about how we can access the people who might adopt the innovative solution - whether it's staff within an organisation or people in society - and also where there’s the resource, the insight, the testing capability, the money that could enable the solution to come to market.”
The Challenge North Tyne areas of focus are succinct - supporting people at home, work and play in later life, and delivering energy efficient, low carbon homes - but broad enough to allow some discovery to happen to find a true focus.
Sarah Cox and her team work with key partners to find that more specific focus by jointly identifying problems they are grappling with, where new ideas and insights might help crack a solution.
The idea is to find projects to work on where every participant can be fairly certain at the outset they will get back more than they put in - whether it's a solution to a problem, a new approach to use in their business, or new connections.
That way, even if the exact direction of a project is unclear at the outset, the value is still obvious and the Innovation SuperNetwork team can be sure of buy-in.
For larger or more established organisations much of the value comes in helping them "do the discovery", Sarah says, as even those with their own innovation teams and dedicated resource can find themselves blinkered by their existing thinking or by being too close to the problem.
For SMEs, it's often taking something in its early stages and encouraging them to look at it critically, "whether it's asking ‘do people really want this’, or building the business model to validate how much can be generated, by when, through which activities. Effectively, they’re assessing whether the solution works effectively enough and if it’s provable," Sarah explains.
The goal for all participants is to "give a safe space where they're not expected to have all the answers," Sarah says, something which can be difficult for those in leadership positions who are used to needing to be decisive.
“I think my talent is I can pick up quite complex concepts or difficult things quite easily and remix them in different ways, which brings greater value than they would have separately. I get really excited about that.”
Throughout our conversation Cox refers to the friction and messiness of innovation, where trial and error - and therefore failure - are a necessary part of the process.
She's clear that the best way to deal with that discomfort is to approach innovation as part of a community - that support and variety of skills and viewpoints helps you get to where you're going more quickly.
I ask her whether, given her enthusiasm for innovation, she's happier in messier trial and error projects rather than rigid structures.
She disagrees, saying instead she's learned to be comfortable in the approach, and how to help others be comfortable in it, by maintaining a focus on the end goal.
Growing up in what she calls a "standard North East background", Cox did well at school and followed the traditional route to university, even though she never felt like it was a perfect fit for her.
As she progressed in academia, however, things started to make more sense.
“I was always a creative, slightly oddball kid," she says of finding her feet, "and it was only once I got into this kind of space where actually you can come up with an idea, you can find people who have complementary skills and create something real in what felt like a blink of an eye. That was not at all my educational background or my history previously, it was all you, ‘do your exams, you get your grades’, everything solitary.”
“It was stumbling onto this ability to mess up and try new things," Sarah continues, "and to do it with others, that made me realise the speed at which you can do something when you’re working in collaboration with people who have a variety of skills, but you’re all focused on a common goal.”
She found that joy in community having already been bitten by the design and innovation bug, but it still took a little while for her to find what it was that set her apart.
“I love ideas, making connections and mixing things together in different ways,” Sarah says. “I think my talent is I can pick up quite complex concepts or difficult things quite easily and remix them in different ways, which brings greater value than they would have separately. I get really excited about that.”
Cox also has a unique outlook on innovation - where she has an enthusiasm for reaching the end goal quickly, but an appreciation of the safety of structures and processes. She credits a later-in-life neurodivergence diagnosis as helping her understand that dichotomy of thinking.
“I feel like I’ve got a Type A perfectionist personality at war with a feral racoon,” she says, “because I’ve got this kind of neurodivergent brain that’s really creative and wants to jump ahead at a million miles an hour and sees these connections, but then also (...) I had this thing that I’ve got to be good professionally and academically. I’ve got this ambition to do stuff that requires you to be not good at first, for people to question you, and you need to quiet that fearful voice in your brain.”
Learning from her own experience, and years of repetition in innovation projects across different sectors has allowed her to shortcut the ‘fear quieting’ for others.
“You can have great ambitions for change,” she says, “but it’s hard, you will create friction. If you’re asking people to do things differently, they’re creating friction for themselves and difficulties that they may not fully anticipate. This is why I am such an advocate for building innovation communities. It’s much easier to not take that difficulty personally when those around you are experiencing the same thing.”
Whether by accident or design, Cox says her career has tended to focus on quite risk averse sectors; innovation in those environments where process and structure are king. Her experience has helped her build credibility, and also helped her recognise what different organisations are able to tolerate.
That’s important, Sarah says, because “if you’re tackling a really big, meaningful issue, you’re never going to have a perfect view of the problem.”
“You’ve got to have the confidence to get started,” she continues, “but enough of a framework and a toolkit that you’re not just racing off in one direction, that you’re checking are we going the right way, is this the shallowest incline to the point we are trying to get to.”
That allows her to find a happy medium with the people she’s working with - especially when working with diverse interests across an innovation project. It’s an approach Cox feels demonstrates its own value quickly, and that once people have been through the process they are more comfortable repeating it.
“It’s a craft that you learn,” she explains, “and a muscle you develop by doing it in community with others. And that’s the fastest way to learn and the least risky way to learn from the point of view of your business, because you validate your idea quickly, you tap into resources you otherwise wouldn’t get access to.”
Cox is enthusiastic about the potential for this approach to innovation, and for Challenge North Tyne in particular, to address some significant societal challenges.
“We have more knowledge of all the issues we face than ever,” she says, “particularly younger people who are well-informed, and well-connected to what is going on in the world. It’s entirely overwhelming to look at these big issues and feel any sense of personal ability to know where to start.”
The way in which Challenge North Tyne’s systems are designed show a way past that initial feeling of being overwhelmed, Cox says, by building structures which allow people to take part, and to make it “easier and clearer for people to turn that frustration and passion and ingenuity into something.”
One of those people is Aisha Purvis, the founder and CEO of Sensmart, a Newcastle-based start-up that tackles malnutrition and dehydration in healthcare settings through a specialist menu, which allows a patient to see, hear and smell the food on offer before it arrives.
It’s an innovation born of Aisha’s experience as a care home manager, and as a carer for her daughter who is diagnosed with Rett syndrome.
For Aisha, innovation was “the opportunity to create a physical representation of an idea”, but it then becomes “ongoing once a concept or idea has been developed as there is always room to enhance and adapt with ever-changing societal needs.”
As well as practical support around intellectual property, Purvis talks about the benefit of community, and exposure to others on similar innovation journeys, and the chance “to network with like-minded start-ups gaining knowledge and understanding from others, as well as gaining professional guidance and support to navigate through innovation pathways.”
Purvis represents an important part of Cox's work, as someone with a practical background, lived experience and an idea, but without a traditional platform to innovate.
Challenge North Tyne is designed to broaden the pool of those involved in innovation projects, and to make sure they include different voices and different perspectives in the process.
In Sarah's view, doing that effectively means building different structures and systems which are more accessible, and being conscious to include a wide variety of lived experiences in innovation design.
“You don’t know how much more friction you’re experiencing compared to what you would be if you’re in a different body," Sarah says of the importance of inclusive innovation. "You don’t know how many people’s talent is being lost because they couldn’t get back into meaningful work after having a child, or disability kept them out of the workplace, or because they don’t drink or because they’re from a different ethnic group they didn’t get the same social network as others.”
I ask about Cox’s experience working with, and challenging the thinking of, traditionally male-dominated industries.
“This is the hard thing about any form of discrimination,” she says. “You’ve only seen the world through your eyes, so you’re unsure, you never really have a full view of what you’ve missed out on.”
She goes on to talk about the traditional networking, business development and pitching process which dominates the tech and innovation world, and how that tends to feature bias because it’s commonly led by older white men.
“Those leaders see themselves in the ‘start-up’ founders who are like them - similar background, same ethnicity, same gender - and they are more likely to see potential where there is not necessarily more than others, because they identify with them more.”
That’s why the design of Challenge North Tyne’s processes is so important, creating openness and accessibility.
Cox is also complimentary of the Innovation SuperNetwork's own openness, and its inclusivity, with lots of women in senior positions, flexibility encouraged and a large proportion of the workforce who work part time, whether due to caring responsibilities, studying or with outside business interests.
It's an approach which aids talent retention and allows people to bring those extra insights to the task of increasing innovation activity in the region.
With the North East traditionally lagging behind other regions when it comes to things like R&D tax credit claims or patent applications, I ask whether there's a capacity issue in the region, and whether that means the North East is less well-placed than elsewhere to tackle the big problems.
“The thing that’s almost more interesting and the thing that motivates me is that it doesn’t really matter how well placed we are to tackle some of these issues,” Cox says.
“We’re got a great opportunity in the North East with our size,” she continues, “the connectedness of some key partners, the physical assets, and the need we have to upskill and address skills of the future.”
“We talk year after year about what the North East needs to do differently and ultimately…just do it,” she concludes.
One organisation doing just that is MOBIE, an educational charity founded in 2017 by the architect George Clarke, which works with young people to encourage them into the built environment industry.
MOBIE’s head of education Gerry Ruffles says it’s about “inspiring and engaging young people to have a voice and see their futures in construction through digital technologies,” as well as “exploring sustainable, affordable, energy efficient home building design and processes with greater emphasis on quality, performance and the needs of home users.”
Their work with Challenge North Tyne has allowed them to make connections and access financial support to bring forward e-learning programmes for construction and built environment SMEs.
Grant support has allowed MOBIE to work with an app design company to bring forward an e-learning app aimed at SMEs and young people not in education, employment or training, which Gerry says will position the e-learning programmes as “commercially viable options to industry and colleges providing MOBIE with a new, potentially good and growable income source and employment opportunities.”
““What we've done before isn't going to get us to where we need to be, and we need to get comfortable in the mess, in an uncertain environment, asking more questions and doing more discovery upfront rather than pretending we've got the answers.”
That commerical viability, and the potential for future work to be self-sustaining is something which Cox and her team are always conscious of, but she argues there’ll always be a role for the public sector in de-risking the process.
Nevertheless, the aim, Cox says, is “to build capacity in the organisations, the ecosystems, and local government that needs to be there.”
“It's not about creating a dependency,” she continues, “it's about developing the ability of the system to value this kind of activity, even though it's messy, even though it's a lot easier to jump to a solution or focus on what's known. You're not going to solve big systemic or social problems with that approach."
An area of difficulty, whether it comes to public sector funding de-risking the process, or getting buy-in from risk averse private sector businesses, is evaluating and measuring the impact of innovation projects.
“Because so much of that value sits outside of ‘X jobs created; X hours delivered’,” Sarah explains, “we all need to be capturing that impact and advocating for the value of these more collaborative, open methods.”
That’s important to do, because innovators like Sarah Cox and the team at Challenge North Tyne need commitment from a broad range of partners; they need people to try out the approach, so as a region we can get better at it.
“Innovation is not something you learn in the classroom,” Cox says. “It's not just a model - although that can be a very useful starting point - it's a set of skills and a way of working that you develop best in practice with other people.”
“What we've done before isn't going to get us to where we need to be,” she concludes, “and we need to get comfortable in the mess, in an uncertain environment, asking more questions and doing more discovery upfront rather than pretending we've got the answers.”
