Dominic Oughton is Principal Industrial Fellow for IfM Education and Consultancy Services Associates
Prior to joining IfM in 2005, Dominic spent 20 years in leadership roles in the manufacturing industry. He started his career with PA Consulting Group, developing Manufacturing Strategy and Automation solutions in industries as diverse as Pharmaceuticals, Food, Electronics and Metals. He then led the development of a new product range for the Industrial Machinery division of Massey Ferguson, before forming a UK start-up for an off-shore Manufacturing Group.
Dominic also held three MD roles, leading profitable growth in businesses in the electronics industry. He managed the UK Metering and Environmental Systems Divisions of the global Siemens Group, and most recently led Baxall Limited, market leading CCTV manufacturer, gaining recognition as Best Electronics factory in the Management Today Awards for Manufacturing.
An alumnus of IfM’s Manufacturing Engineering Tripos, Dominic has a first class honours degree and MEng in Manufacturing Engineering.
Dominic’s current role involves leading projects with partner companies aimed at putting IfM research output into practice. His main focus of activity is in developing winning business and technology strategies to meet the needs of government and corporate organisations.
Dominic also leads IfM’s practice activities in the area of Open Innovation and heads the Open Innovation in the FMCG Value Chain: A Practitioner Forum.
Related posts
Like so many meetings, the IfM’s Open Innovation Forum’s March workshop, was hastily reconvened into a virtual event due to the coronavirus crisis. Co-organiser Dominic Oughton, discusses some of the learning points.
The OI Forum tackled the packaging challenge using a structured ‘Design Thinking’ approach to discover new solutions
To be successful an OI team needs around forty specific skills covering the four stages of OI – Want, Find, Get, Manage – these skills fall into four categories: introspective, extrospective, interactive and technical.
Dominic Oughton reflects on the 2017 Open Innovation Forum Pitching Contest and the ways in which the competition has evolved since its inception.
Dominic Oughton considers two related questions: ‘How relevant is collaboration in innovation, now and going forwards?’ and ‘Does the brand ‘Open Innovation’ still serve any value?’
What activity leads to what value/outputs in Open Innovation, and what is the threshold where we decide whether there was a significant ‘open’ aspect? The cynical answer might be that it depends on the ultimate success of the investment and who is trying to support which agenda! Dominic Oughton highlights the lack of metrics to measure the value of investment in Open Innovation.
It has long been an observation from the Open Innovation research group that the ‘outbound’ aspect of OI is massively under-exploited by businesses. So Olaf Gruess, Disruptive Technology Manager & Global Connector at General Mills discussion of ‘enabled supply’ is interesting.
Strategic issues and opportunities in the food and drink sector need a joined-up approach to make real progress: sustainability; provenance and obesity can’t be tackled through bi-party relationships alone and this is where open innovation comes into its own.
