Chris has a long and deep history in strategy and innovation. He cut his strategy teeth in a London strategy consulting firm ending up as a Partner specialising in service industries prior to the practice being sold to PwC. Chris then sailed to New Zealand where he led the strategy teams at organisations like Vodafone, Vector and TelstraClear. He then moved to Australia and extended his leadership experience with executive roles within the financial service and healthcare sectors.
Chris then shifted into the emerging field of innovation and how to create and embed it as an organisational function. He spent five years leading a Melbourne-based innovation consultancy which specialised in leveraging academic best practice and turning it into pragmatic, actionable innovation methods that could be applied across any organisation in any industry. As part of this journey, Chris studied strategy and innovation under Clayton Christensen from Harvard University. He returned to New Zealand in 2022 to set up the Strategy and Innovation practice of Purple Shirt and bring innovation best practice methods to the New Zealand market.
Chris has worked with many organisations either helping them develop growth strategies, run innovation projects or build long term innovation capability as a source of competitive advantage. Chris has leveraged his expertise to help organisations like the Blood Service to completely redefine its value proposition having leveraged best practice innovation research methods to uncover why people do (and don't) choose to donate blood. Chris is currently leading an innovation programme within Fletcher Building to help build innovation capability amongst the future leaders of its 27 different business units. Chris is a regular public speaker at conferences and events to help share the story of innovation best practice and the key pitfalls to avoid.
Chris is an explorer at heart and you'll find him either exploring New Zealand on his adventure bike or out on water learning to master the latest wing foiling technology. In returning to New Zealand he moved to Christchurch with his partner and one of their daughters leaving the other three daughters to continue their adult journeys in Australia.
