During my time at Connected Places Catapult, I founded and scaled the Innovation Procurement Empowerment Centre (IPEC), a mission-driven institution that's reshaping how the public sector identifies, validates and adopts new solutions.

The UK public sector spends almost £400 billion annually buying goods and services from the private sector - around £70 billion of which is spent by local government.

This represents a powerful lever for stimulating new solutions to policy priorities - from operational productivity to new user experiences, improved outcomes, or net zero transition. However, the way the state engages the market has traditionally been a barrier, rather than a boost, to innovation adoption.

From humble beginnings in 2019, at the point I left the Catapult, IPEC enjoyed a network of more than 3,000 pioneers and practitioners in public sector innovation, had influenced national policy, provided in-depth capability building to service managers and decision makers in more than 50 public agencies across the UK, and published a wide range of practical resources, academic research and thought leadership.