About
Innovation leader,
30+ years in.
I’m Steve. I’ve spent my career helping large multinational enterprises find and execute new business models — twenty years of it at HSBC, the last two as Global Head of Innovation for Global Functions. Today I lead HorizonX, advise McKinsey and Mitsubishi, and sit on boards in quantum computing, data privacy and AI.
- 50K+
- LinkedIn followers
- 50+
- Publications
- 20yrs
- At HSBC
- 4
- Languages spoken
How I work
Four things that stay constant.
- 01
Start with why it matters now
Every emerging technology arrives wrapped in hype. The first job is separating the part that changes your economics this cycle from the part that doesn’t — then making the case to the people who control the budget.
- 02
Sponsorship before strategy
Innovation programmes don’t die from bad ideas, they die from thin air cover. Secure executive sponsorship first, set the strategy second, and the organisation will follow you into the uncomfortable part.
- 03
Experiment, learn, then scale
Experimentation and iteration are phases in their own right, not a prelude to the real work. Scaling something you haven’t learned from yet is the most expensive mistake available to a large enterprise.
- 04
Build literacy across the business
A capability that lives in one team is a dependency. Quantum, AI and cloud fluency have to reach the practitioners — which is why the programmes I’ve run graduated hundreds of colleagues, not a handful of specialists.
The record
Where I’ve worked.
- HorizonX
- McKinsey & Company
- MIT xPRO
- The Quantum Index
- Zapata Quantum
- Classiq
- QuSecure
- Mitsubishi Corporation
- Digital Futures
- Bain & Company
- QuEra Computing
- SuperAlign
- TNE
- PolyAI
- HSBC
- Tracfone
- US Army