The Oxford Creativity Team
Oxford Creativity was founded in 1999 by Karen Gadd. The company is based close to Oxford and its TRIZ consultants travel regularly to clients all over the UK and in Europe to deliver innovation problem solving sessions and TRIZ training. Its public workshops are held at Oxford University and at Leighton Hall in the north west of England.
Thousands of engineers and scientists have learned TRIZ from Oxford Creativity in the last ten years.
Karen Gadd
Thousands of engineers and scientists have learned TRIZ from Karen and her Oxford Creativity colleagues in the last eleven years. Karen is the founder of Oxford Creativity as well as teaching TRIZ in companies such as ABB, Airbus, BAE Systems, Bentley, Borealis, and BNFL (to keep it alphabetical and current in the last 12 months). Karen has selected and trained all the Oxford Creativity workshop leaders and developed all the Oxford Creativity materials.
Karen studied Mechanical Engineering at Imperial College, and has an MBA from London Business School. After working in strategy and corporate planning in the City of London she returned to live in Oxford and was a tutor at Oxford's business school the European School of Management ESCP-EAP (based in Paris, Oxford, Madrid and Berlin). From 1995-2002 she was a Governor of Coventry University. Karen also founded and ran both MUSIC at OXFORD and the European Union Baroque Orchestra - these successful music organisations still flourish.
Karen has worked on nothing but TRIZ since discovering and learning its power to give us all the routes, to all the solutions, to all problems. In 1998 Karen started Oxford Creativity to concentrate on developing simple and practical TRIZ problem solving for the European market. Oxford Creativity has taken TRIZ to major companies including Rolls-Royce, British Nuclear Group, Bentley Motors, BAE Systems, Esso, Glaxo, Nissan and Pilkington. Oxford Creativity is now well established as one of the world’s top TRIZ companies and has helped to make TRIZ well known and widely used throughout Europe and encouraged top companies to create expert TRIZ teams for innovative problem solving.
Karen is married, has four children and lives happily in Oxford and the Lake District. Concerts and singing are still part of her interests and activities, as well as speaking at conferences throughout the world on the success and power of TRIZ. Karen's book TRIZ for Engineers: Enabling Inventive Problem Solving is being published by WileyBlackwell in January 2011.
Andrew Martin
Andrew Martin is a systems engineer with over twenty years experience in the aerospace industry. Andrew’s areas of expertise range from technical niches - such as visual systems for flight simulator - to more generic engineering disciples - such as requirements management and the development and integration of systems engineering processes. Andrew has been using and promoting TRIZ over the last five years, through practical day-to-day application, formal teaching and problem solving facilitation.
Andrew Martin divides his working time between BAE Systems and Oxford Creativity. At BAE Systems Andrew uses TRIZ as part of his role as a systems engineer, working on the specification and development of training solutions.
At Oxford Creativity Andrew is a TRIZ Consultant, problem solving and teaching TRIZ with many companies large and small. Andrew believes that the systematic nature of the TRIZ method makes it a natural partner for formal quality systems and that it should be embedded into company procedures to bridge the 'creativity gap' that lies between system requirements and solution concepts. Andrew is almost certainly the worst saxophonist on the planet.
Lilly Haines-Gadd
Lilly has worked for Oxford Creativity for 7 years, and delivers training and facilitates innovative problem solving workshops. She is interested in how TRIZ makes everyone a better problem solver and a more creative thinker – regardless of their natural approach to problems. Through her extensive hands-on experience of problem solving and TRIZ training she has observed that TRIZ not only gives individuals great clarity of thought but also gets diverse teams working together and communicating more effectively.
This has led her to recently completing a degree in Psychology from Cardiff University, and she aims to research how TRIZ makes us all more effective problem solvers, at individual, team and company level. She has trained in KAI (Kirton Adaption-Innovation), a psychometric test which measures individual’s natural thinking style, which is used to help individuals and teams work most effectively when solving problems. She is currently studying for an MSc in Occupational Psychology at Birkbeck College, University of London.
Andrea Mica
Andrea joined IP Group from Oxford University where he was a Begbroke Enterprise Fellow for a year. Andrea has an MSc in Industrial Design Management of New Product Development from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. He worked in technology transfer from the space sector for 7 years before moving to CFB, helping to set up and run 4 materials companies based on Russian technology. Andrea is responsible for IP Group’s Physical Sciences and its activities with the University of Surrey. Andrea has provided consultancy and training in technical problem solving through Oxford Creativity since 2003.
Frédéric Mathis
After a degree in Biochemistry and a year of Advanced Math and Biology study, Frédéric has joined Mars within the product quality department. He then quickly moved to the packaging team where he covered a wide range of roles, going from Packaging Quality and Supplier Management to Packaging Development Engineer and Packaging Development Manager. Since end 2008, Frédéric has moved to the role of Packaging Innovation Manager where he is responsible for delivering the European Bitesize, Boxed and Block Segments Packaging Innovations.
After having achieved a deep expertise level in Packaging Processes and Concepts, Vendor Assurance approach, Project and Risk management, Usage of Packaging in extreme conditions, Team Management, Trade and Transports constraints (including lab simulation and Packaging Performance modeling), Frédéric has been trained in TRIZ that he later used to develop a system to help the opening of Pouches that resulted in a Patent in 2005.
As native French speaker, Frédéric is supporting Oxford Creativity since 2008 in TRIZ trainings mostly in France. Convinced by the power of the TRIZ tools, Frédéric is using them to develop new Innovative Packaging concepts at Mars. He is in particular exploring and developing the TRIZ trends to support him to create the packs of the future. In addition to work on problem solving algorithms, he is looking at developing Innovation level evaluation tools and understanding the link between the TRIZ trends and Design development in relation with consumer interaction.
Ron Donaldson
Our newest addition to the Team, Ron has a broad computer science background and a Combined Science degree in Ecology and Geology.
Initially working as a systems analyst for Customs and Excise he later joined English Nature to develop and implement Information and Knowledge Strategies leading him to develop his own unique approach which he termed 'Knowledge Ecology'.
Experienced in structured systems analysis, process modelling and business process re-engineering, Ron is now a self employed consultant and an accredited Cognitive Edge practitioner. He specialises in narrative/complexity based methods, appreciative inquiry and open space technology.
An accomplished conference speaker especially in knowledge management and storytelling, Ron enjoys working as a coach, facilitator or trainer in the preferred fields of knowledge sharing, change management, team building and of course problem solving using TRIZ.
Colin Reid
Colin combines his TRIZ training with being the Director of RedPoint Projects UK Ltd, an independent consultancy working in areas of Innovation and Technology Management, New Product Research & Development and Project Management. Colin holds both a Mechanical Engineering degree and an MBA. Colin’s career is closely associated with progressive technology and engineering based organisations including international business development and marketing roles in companies such as Rolls-Royce and British Aerospace, working in technology transfer and as an independent technology and innovation consultant. He has held the position of Principal Consultant in a UK engineering and management consultancy, focussing on new product development, engineering and technology management processes. He has four years NZ experience dealing with New Zealand’s leading R&D players across a wide range of industries including Manufacturing, Biotechnology and ICT.
Peter Griffiths
Peter has broad experience of industry and education. Through fourteen years in the motor industry he had experience of Financial Analysis, Design Engineering and, at a senior level, Product Planning. Particular achievements heading up Component Product Planning were concerned with the successful rationalisation of major components throughout the vehicle range.
As a University Principal Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering with Coventry University he has had broad responsibilities for teaching across the subject range with a particular focus on design engineering for automotive products and systems. He has been active in research in the fields of engine design and vehicle dynamics and has undertaken consultancy projects in engineering design and in-company training of engineers for GEC.
The greatest achievement has been as the initiator and leader of a total redesign of the way engineers are educated across the Engineering Faculty to match the demands of working as an engineer in industry. This work also lead to the creation of a number of innovative courses in Product Engineering. Over the last three years his focus for innovation has been on the teaching of TRIZ and on the supervision of projects using TRIZ in conceptual design.
Tim Rusling
Tim is a business development consultant whose career in this field spans nearly 20 years. He has worked on many major projects that have taken him all over the UK, Europe, the Middle East, South East Asia and the U.S.
Tim works almost exclusively with professional service firms and a vast majority of his clients in recent years have been engineers, including some of the worlds largest multi disciplined engineering consultancies.
He has the reputation of being an outstanding facilitator who fully engages with participants ensuring that they get the maximum potential from his workshops and interventions.
Tim also has over 10 years of passion and experience in developing and delivering creative thinking tools and processes, helping clients to unleash their creativity and thinking capital.
Simon Brodie
Simon Brodie is the only serving military member of the Oxford Creativity team. He has spent over 22 years in the Royal Air Force as an engineering officer, mainly working with helicopters and large transport aircraft. In this time he has covered the full range of military engineering: from rapid decision-making to solve critical engineering issues during the Kosovo conflict through to the slower paced drafting of tri-service helicopter engineering policy. There has also been the odd foray into Nuclear Accident Response, running technical training schools, Health and Safety, Risk Assessment, Quality Management, undertaking engineering trials and evaluation work (with associated airworthiness responsibilities) and leading commercial business teams competing for MoD work amongst others.
He was introduced to TRIZ in mid-2007, attended his first training course with Oxford Creativity later that year and has never looked back. The fundamentals of TRIZ have found continuous application in his day-to-day engineering work and also in his general life where he has found that helping people to conceptualise problems is a phenomenally powerful, ridiculously simple and seriously underused tool.
Simon is a fully qualified assessor for the Strength Deployment Inventory behavioural and motivational theory system and is also a Trauma Risk Management assessor and co-ordinator.
He lives in west Oxfordshire with his wife, three daughters, two huskies and the semi-adopted cat from next door. In his spare time he spends far too much time playing on the computer and not nearly enough time focussing on his creative writing.