Oakland feature in new book ‘Open innovation in the food and beverage industry’

In January 2013 one of Oakland Innovation’s Directors – Jenny Brown and Principal Consultant – Lucinda Tolhurst wrote a chapter in “Open Innovation in the food and beverage industry” published in January 2013. In chapter 16 they both talk about challenges faced by multinational food and beverage corporations when forming strategic external networks for open innovation

Food and beverage companies are increasingly choosing to enhance internal idea development by pursuing an ‘open innovation’ approach, allowing the additional exploitation of external ideas and paths to market. Jenny and Lucinda from Oakland Innovation participate in helping this book to draw on a range of important case studies, Open innovation in the food and beverage industry and investigate the challenges and opportunities afforded by the incorporation of open innovation into the food industry.

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Oakland raises awareness of European business culture and attitudes

During February Oakland held a week long social event over the lunchtime period to celebrate and raise awareness of the different European cultures here at Oakland Innovation. 

Oakland employee’s bought in different foods from their native countries and gave a short informative presentation about the culture and attitudes within their home country or former country of residence. With 2 - 3 countries being celebrated each day it made for a diverse and fun afternoon, the presentations took place first in the Boardroom followed by a gathering in the kitchen to sample traditional foods.

We encourage our employee’s to be social together and this aides the working relationships and helps us achieve all we have as a company. The week was fun and educational for everyone that contributed and participated in the celebrations. We are all looking forward to the next event later in the year.

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Meet Simon Sedehizadeh and Ankita Singal, our newest recruits

We are delighted to announce that we have added another two more names to our growing team of highly skilled consultant analysts with the appointment of Simon Sedehizadeh and Ankita Singal.

Simon started with us in March 2012 and achieved his undergraduate M.Chem degree from Sheffield University which included a year in industry.  He then completed his PhD in Organic Chemistry at the University of Manchester.

Hailing from New Delhi, Ankita came to the UK in 2005. While in India she studied for a B.Tech in Biotechnology which encompassed subjects as varied as bioprocess engineering, chemistry, biology and genetic engineering at the prestigious Vellore Institute of Technology.

Ankita took her Masters from the Universtity of Manchester where she studied Biotechnology.  Ankita’s PhD subject was Developmental Biology which she started in Manchester with the research element being completed at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh. Ankita speaks several languages including Hindi, Punjabi and German.

“It is a pleasure to welcome Simon and Ankita to our team,” says Oakland director Jenny Brown, adding: “they join us at a very exciting time with increasing assignments from our existing clients and new clients joining us.”

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Feet of Endurance

We thought that last year’s Global Corporate Challenge (GCC) had gone well, that is until we took up the challenge for 2012.

Not only are our averages up on last year but we are actually surpassing the ambitious targets we set ourselves for this year’s GCC. The GCC is an annual event and it aims to encourage companies to enter teams who, essentially, do as much walking as they possibly can.  The objective is to walk the globe over a sixteen week period.

We wear pedometers and each day the total number of steps we take is inputted into the GCC website (www.gettheworldmoving.com).  The goal is to achieve at least 10,000 steps a day.  Oakland has entered four teams of seven and the more active we are, the more exotic locations we visit on our virtual walking journey around the world.

The GCC started on 24th May 2012 and already we are averaging 17,000 steps a day. Our leading team, however, is averaging an impressive 22,000 steps a day.

It is remarkable how enthusiastic everyone has become – there is no shortage of colleagues offering to make coffee, just to add a few more steps to their daily total.  One team member is getting married later this year in Manchester and has set herself the challenge of walking the distance to the church.

At the moment, Oakland is ranked 27th in the country and is 123rd globally.

The serious side to the GCC is that it is great for team building, it makes us fitter and helps two fantastic charities: the Iganga Babies Home – an orphanage in Uganda and the Foundation for Chronic Disease Prevention.

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Walking the World – again

Once again, we will be strapping on our pedometers, putting our best feet forward and taking steps to walk at least 10,000 steps a day to try and walk around the globe over a 16 week period – it’s almost time for the Global Corporate Challenge.

Much more than simply a challenge to walk around the world, the GCC is scientifically proven to have a positive impact on mental health, energy levels, weight management, blood pressure reduction, sleep patterns, overall health, waist reduction and better nutrition.

Each participating company will put as many teams of seven together as possible (we have four) and each participant wears a pedometer from morning till night and  every step taken is recorded.  Last year we averaged over 10,000 steps a day and we walked the equivalent of the distance to South America – if you really want to walk round the world, then you need to be averaging around 25,000 steps a day.

As teams are made up of work colleagues, the payback to companies is significant with research from the GCC organisers showing improved morale, increased productivity, higher job satisfaction, better team work and reduced absenteeism.

This year we will be joining some 180,000 people worldwide who are also taking part in the GCC and the numbers are growing each year.

But the GCC is about more than individuals, teams and workplaces.  The GCC also supports the Global Children’s Challenge which aims to encourage children to adopt more active lifestyles, as well as the Footprint Initiative which supports the Iganga Babies Home, which is an orphanage in Uganda and the Foundation for Chronic Disease Prevention.

The GCC starts on May 24th 2012 and we’ll let you know how we get on.

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CoDev 2012 – where the Open Innovation community comes together

For the fourth year in a row we attended the largest event in the Open Innovation calendar, CoDev 2012, held at La Jolla in California.

CoDev itself has been running for about a decade and it is growing year on year.  We like it because the content is always interesting and stimulating, and it is always a great venue to network with contacts, current clients and new clients.

This year there were presentations on a myriad of topics including, expanding Open Innovation as a key driver of business growth, managing IP in complex deal structures and delivering ROI when building global Open Innovation networks, among others.

Discussions were relaxed, open and frank, and we were flattered to have Oakland Innovation referenced by several speakers during their presentations.

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Eileens’s take on India

“The sense of optimism in I experienced in each of the cities I visited was almost palpable,” says Eileen Buttimer, our Director of Operations, following her week-long visit to India where she spent time in Mumbai, Bangalore and New Delhi.

Eileen was there on a business development trip combined with meeting some current clients.

“You can’t help but be caught up in the vibrancy, excitement and optimism of India,” says Eileen, adding: “There was a time when young people were looking for opportunities to leave India to make a life for themselves elsewhere. Now they are intent on staying because they want to be part of the huge opportunities the country has to offer as the economy surges forward at an astonishing rate.

“People are so warm and friendly and can’t do enough to be helpful and I was surprised at how young the population is – perhaps that helps to explain the feeling of optimism.

“They have a hunger for knowledge and are not content to follow, they want to lead.   The young people I met were highly skilled, highly educated and highly motivated.  Everyone has a mobile phone – sometimes two, one for work and one for personal use.

“Of course you can’t avoid the economic extremes of India, there is extreme poverty, but at the same time there is a dynamism and drive forward that isn’t going to be fettered by the past and that seems to balance out some of the extremes,” explains Eileen.

And as for eating curry in forty degree heat, well Eileen did her PhD in Birmingham, which may not match the climate of India, but it does have some of the best curry houses outside India.

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China – fewer bikes more cars

The pace of development in China is breath taking.  It isn’t just the size of the business parks – which dwarf anything we have in this country, or the number of blue chip companies vying for a slice of the Asian market.  One of the most striking elements of China’s commitment to becoming commercially pre-eminent is the country’s Bullet train.

This phenomenal piece of engineering has slashed the journey time from Shanghai – the burgeoning business centre and Beijing with its universities and research establishments from over eighteen hours to a little over five hours.

It’s almost as though the universities don’t want to waste a second in transporting highly qualified graduates to the multi-national companies eager to make use of their skills.

At least that’s the view of two of our consultants, Hong Qian and David Nightingale when they returned from a business trip to meet their clients recently.

“Improvements in the infrastructure mean that Shanghai isn’t as crowded as you might expect,” says David who first visited China in 1999, adding: “The city is incredibly westernised, but that’s hardly surprising given the city’s strategic importance as a thriving international port.  Shanghai was always going to have a Western facing element.”

“Many of our clients have established Research and Development centres in China and the area is becoming increasingly important for our clients wanting to access the Asian market. And that makes China a strategically important country for Oakland,” says Hong.

That importance is underpinned by the fact that Oakland now has five of its team members who are fluent Mandarin and Cantonese  speakers.

“The government’s commitment to making the transition from manufacturing to innovation is everywhere.  Not just in the number of graduates pouring out of universities each year or the number of skyscrapers and palpable atmosphere of prosperity, but in the sheer volume of companies who have chosen to locate their Research and Development  – in effect their futures – in the country,” says Hong.

 But the pace of change does come at a price even for someone like Hong who was born in China.

“Six months can be a long time in China and when I went to my home town to visit my family, so much had changed since my last visit, that I actually got lost.”

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We would like you to meet the newest members of our team.

It’s a good job that our HR Manager Clare Bye relishes a challenge.  We grew so quickly during 2011, with new assignments from existing clients, together with new business wins that finding a clutch of new talented, motivated recruits became Clare’s top priority. So after ploughing through CVs, holding preliminary telephone interviews, followed by first, second and third round interviews, we are delighted to introduce the newest members of our team.

Deepali Gupta has a PhD in Bioinorganic Chemistry from the International Max Planck Research School in Dortmund, Germany and an MPhil in Bioscience Enterprise from  Cambridge University. More recently, Deepali worked as a Business Analyst for the Wellcome Trust working in the Technology Transfer department on the DBT-Wellcome initiative on R&D for affordable healthcare in India. Deepali is fluent Hindi and German  

Krishnaa Mahbubani was born and raised in Hong Kong and speaks Cantonese and Hindi . She holds a Masters in Chemical and Process Engineering from the University of Sheffield. Krishnaa is currently writing up her PhD  from the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology,  University of Cambridge, her thesis is titled:‘ Vehicles for the Oral Delivery of Live Bacteria’ .

 Rachael Burcher holds an MEng in Chemical Engineering from Cambridge University and has worked for the last 14 years in industry, for AstroZeneca, Merck and more recently as Lead Engineer at Wyeth Biotech.

Katarzyna (“Kasia”) is from Poland and has a PhD in Physical Chemistry from Cambridge University where her research area was on modelling and prediction of crystal structures. Kasia obtained an undergraduate degree in Chemistry from Silesia University in Poland. After completing her MSc degree Kasia worked for Novartis (London) and GSC (Ware). She also studied HPLC and GC methods at Greenwich University (Chatham).

 Helen Atherton has a PhD from the Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge. Between 2008 and 2010 Helen spent two and a half years as a post-doc at the University of Oxford.  Her project was focussed on assessing cardiac metabolism in vivo using MRI.

 Andrew Dadd has a PhD in Chemistry from Nottingham University. Andrew started his career as a research chemist, before moving into the scientific instruments industry.  More recently he has held a product management role at Biochrom Ltd (a manufacturer of UV Visible spectrophotometers), a European sales role at Synoptics Ltd (a manufacturer of gel doc and Western blot imaging equipment) and a customer support role at Bio-Chem Fluidics Ltd (a supplier of fluidics components used in many types of instruments), before joining us.

Commenting Jenny Brown, a Director with Oakland said: “I am delighted to welcome the latest additions to our team and also to congratulate them.  Winning a career offer from Oakland is no easy matter.  We have exacting standards and a clear idea of the type of candidate who will ‘fit’, both with us and crucially with our clients and part of that is the essential blend between nationalities, international languages and technical skills.”

Oakland's latest recruits

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New director appointment sets 2012 off to a flying start

We are delighted to announce that Eileen Buttimer, a Principal Consultant at Oakland, has accepted our invitation to become our Director of Operations from January 2012. Eileen has been with us for the last eleven years and has played an increasingly significant role in Oakland as the company has grown both physically – we now have over fifty colleagues, and in terms of client activity, many of Oakland’s clients are sector leaders with global presences.

“Operations have always been an important element in the way our business is structured,” explains Eileen, adding: “As we have expanded our client base along with the number of colleagues and client assignments, Operations have taken on a more central position and I was thrilled to be asked to take on that area of responsibility at Director level.”

Eileen’s new role will encompass quality management, resource planning and allocation, developing new research techniques and enhancing client satisfaction with continually improving efficiencies.

Commenting, Michael Zeitlyn, Oakland’s Managing Director said: “It is a pleasure to welcome Eileen on to Oakland’s Board.  Her drive, commitment and passion for quality has underpinned the great contribution she has made to the company’s success. I know that in her new role as Director of Operations  she will build on this foundation and help us achieve even more in the coming years.”

Alongside her new role, Eileen will continue to have day-to-day contact with clients and will oversee assignments from inception to completion.  In addition, Eileen’s aptitude for business development will still have a significant call on her time.

Eileen holds a BSc and Masters in Biochemistry from University College, Cork, an MBA from Henley Business School and a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Birmingham.

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