INNOVATION CONSULTANT
Alan Cucknell
Hi, my name's Alan and my job is to find new and innovative ways to make our client's products stand out from the crowd. My role is very diverse, so you never have a chance to get bored; I've worked on designing lingerie, cars, swimsuits and even nappies! Perhaps the most satisfying projects I am involved in are those with medical companies -on those projects you know that even if you only make a small difference to the product, it can often make a huge difference to a patient's life.
Maths and Science A-levels were great preparation for my Engineering degree and Design Technology allowed me to creatively apply much of what I learnt in Maths and Physics - it kind of linked it all together.
Have a look at some of Alan's projects and find out more about product innovation
Did you know?- You can earn between £18,000 and £55,000 as an Innovation Consultant.
- Innovation Consultants travel all over the world to meet their clients and get briefed on new projects.
- You can see your ideas come to life when a new product is released onto the shelves.
- Many Innovation Consultants work in really informal environments and can wear whatever they like.
- Innovation Consultants work as part of a small internal team as well as with external experts and suppliers depending on the project.
- You can be involved in record breaking products, such as developing the X-glide swimsuit which helped the swimmers in the World Swimming Champions in Rome, smash the current world records.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:For me, I wanted to work with science and technology, and wanted to do something that was creative and spontaneous, not just something that was following other people's instructions.
When I found my job it was a great opportunity for me, because it was something that used maths and science, but also allowed me to be creative and practical.
What we do is we work with our clients on the business and the technical challenges that they bring to us, and help them to come with new ideas and new solutions for the future. A really important part of what we do is by working together as a team we try and come up with completely new solutions to sometimes very old problems.
One of the key ways that we use to help our clients to improve products they're working on is by thinking about the fundamental science behind those products.
This is one of the products we were recently involved with, working with a company called Arena Swimwear, and they asked us to help them to understand how to make a swimsuit that makes athletes go quicker in the water, and the team were able to design a suit that's won several world records at the Swimming Championships in Rome.
Maths definitely resulted in a World Record being broken.
One of the great things about my job is I get to work in a whole load of different product categories. We work with Pampers, for example, we work on renewable energies, we work on medical devices and we also work on helping our clients to combat the effects of climate change. And this is where all of that stuff goes on, but I guess I can't show you at the moment, because that's top secret.
I think science and maths are a great starting point for a career in innovation, because they really give you the tools that you need to see the world differently and to understand how it works.
Interested in becoming an Innovation Consultant? Find out more about it here, check out our Useful Links section or talk to a careers advisor at school.