Be Brave. Have Fun. Make a Difference.
Innovation
that sticks,
not stalls.
Helping New Zealand leaders and teams turn challenges and promising ideas into lasting results, using the DUCTRI framework — a practical, human-centred process built to work with the real complexity of organisations, not against it.
“Vaughan gave us a clear, shared direction, stronger cohesion and renewed commitment. He understands how to move a leadership team from discussion to action.”
James Thompson
Regional Manager / Group Controller, Canterbury Civil Defence Emergency Management
Trusted by leaders and teams across New Zealand
Why promising innovation stalls
Leading innovation in a complex organisation can be deeply frustrating — especially when important work generates energy and insight but never becomes sustained, visible progress.
Your people aren’t the problem, and neither is your ambition. What’s often missing is a shared way to move from insight and possibility through the human and practical realities of implementation.
- Your team jumps to solutions before the real problem is understood.
- Workshops generate energy but not lasting change.
- Good ideas die in the pilot and never make it to scale.
- Innovation loses out to business-as-usual pressure and short-term priorities.
- Organisational culture, incentives and internal politics quietly stall promising work.
- Buy-in is won in the room, then lost across the organisation.
Human-centred innovation built for organisational reality
DUCTRI: from discovery to implementation.
Innovation becomes difficult when promising ideas meet organisational reality — people, behaviour, competing priorities, limited resources and the need to build genuine support.
This is where I do my best work. I help leaders and teams understand the real challenge, align the people involved, design and test better possibilities, and build a practical path towards implementation.
DUCTRI is an end-to-end human-centred innovation process for leaders and teams working in complex environments — where success depends on understanding people, building support and creating the conditions for implementation, not merely designing a promising concept.
Curiosity
Discovering → Understanding
Explore what is really happening and develop a deeper understanding of the people, context and challenge.
Creativity
Creating → Testing
Generate different possibilities, make ideas tangible and learn through practical experimentation.
Clarity
Resourcing → Implementing
Build support, secure what is required and help change become adopted in organisational reality.
Many widely used design-thinking processes conclude with a tested or delivered concept. DUCTRI deliberately continues into Resourcing and Implementing — the human, socio-political and practical work required to build support and make change happen.
I use DUCTRI with organisations that need to understand a complex challenge, align people around what matters, develop and test better possibilities, or move a promising initiative towards implementation.
It provides a shared language and practical structure without ignoring context, judgement or the experiences of the people involved.
The DUCTRI model was originally developed by Dr Christian Walsh. Over six years of working alongside Christian, I have helped co-develop and field-test the practical DUCTRI toolkit. Together, we are the authors of Innovation in Action.
Innovation in Action
A practical guide to human-centred innovation that gets implemented.
Co-authored with Dr Christian Walsh and published by Wiley, Innovation in Action brings the DUCTRI process to life through practical tools, real-world examples and step-by-step guidance across all six phases — from Discovering through to Implementing.
It is for leaders, teams and proactive professionals who are tired of innovation theatre and want a grounded way to understand complex problems, test better possibilities and create change that lasts.
The essential playbook for turning ideas into impact.
Adjunct Professor of AI & Design Thinking, Stanford d.school · Co-author of Ideaflow: The Only Business Metric That Matters · Co-host of the “Beyond the Prompt” podcast
Success should be visible in both the results you achieve and your organisation’s
ability to keep making progress.
01
Clarity about what matters
A deeper understanding of the challenge, stronger alignment around priorities and a practical path forward.
02
Better solutions
Services, products, experiences and ways of working shaped around the needs of the people they affect, not internal assumptions.
03
Momentum towards implementation
Promising initiatives that move beyond ideas and pilots, with greater stakeholder support and clearer consideration of the resources and conditions required to proceed.
04
Capability that remains
Teams build confidence in human-centred innovation and DUCTRI, develop a shared way of working and become better equipped to navigate complexity without depending indefinitely on external support.
I judge success by what happens after the engagement, not simply by what looks good at the end of a workshop.
The process Vaughan took us through helped the team to clarify our thinking from where we have been to where we want to be. The design Vaughan used made it easy for everyone to understand and articulate, with no one being left out of the process. If you are contemplating a redesign of a service, I highly recommend Vaughan.
Ways to work together
Whether you need to move an urgent organisational challenge forward, build capability across a team or develop your own innovation practice, there is a way into the work.
Move an important challenge forward
Consulting, keyshops and facilitation for leaders who need to clarify a complex challenge, align stakeholders and create a practical route towards implementation.
Develop capability across your team
Applied programmes, workshops and executive education that give teams a shared human-centred innovation process, practical tools and the confidence to use them on real work.
Build your own innovation practice
Innovation in Action, the DUCTRI toolkit and practical resources for people who want useful innovation methods without needing to become professional designers.
The experience was so positive and impactful for us that we have asked Vaughan back on numerous occasions. His expertise in design thinking, coupled with an engaging personal style, makes him a valued member of the team transforming our organisation.
From complex challenge to practical progress
Every engagement is different, but the test is the same: did the work help people understand what matters, make better decisions and move something important forward?
Here are six case studies showing how using the DUCTRI framework delivered key outcomes.
New Zealand Young Farmers
Customer Insight
Brackenridge
Practice Leadership Strategy
A focused strategy that puts practice leaders in front of the teams that need them most.
Fonterra
Design Thinking Capability
A design-led mindset the team now practises every week, not just on workshop day.
Canterbury Civil Defence Emergency Management
Strategy Workshop
One agreed purpose, vision and set of values, shared across a newly expanded team.
New Zealand Young Farmers
Value Proposition
Clear, tested value propositions the team can put in front of members with confidence
Antarctica New Zealand
Living Spaces Prototyping
Major design decisions de-risked in a few hours, well before a dollar was spent on construction
Practical thinking for people making change happen
I write about design thinking, human-centred innovation and the realities of turning promising ideas into progress. Expect practical tools, honest lessons from the field and useful ideas you can apply with your team.
You Can’t Schedule Your Way Out of a Systems Problem
Time blocking assumes the problem is a shortage of hours — but creative thinking often needs a different kind of time altogether. Drawing on the hare brain/tortoise mind distinction from Innovation in Action, this piece looks at why reflection and incubation get crowded out by work that proves its value faster, and sets out four conditions — space, psychological safety, broken routines, and the right balance of autonomy and direction — that protect the slower thinking creativity depends on.
You Don’t Have to Build the Thing
A customer once rejected Matt Scott’s product for being the wrong size – not broken, just wrong. It’s the kind of assumption nobody thinks to test until it’s already built. Matt shares why the fastest way to learn what customers actually want isn’t building an MVP, it’s testing the assumption first – from a mis-sized widget to a client renting surfboards out of a van with a handwritten sign.
I can't believe this is free. The amount of information Vaughan offers and the depth of his insights are things you'll be hard-pressed to find elsewhere.
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Be Brave. Have Fun. Make a Difference.
What important initiative
needs to move?
If you’re working on a complex challenge and need greater clarity, alignment or momentum towards implementation, let’s talk about what progress could look like.