STUART SMITH

CEO, Wood Holmes

Stuart Smith is an expert in Smart Cities, Social Media and Innovation. He originally trained as an environmental technologist at Imperial College of Science Technology & Medicine, London. After graduation Stuart was employed as a consultant advising organisations on environmental monitoring and policy. He built up an expertise in environmental informatics including GIS, environmental monitoring networks and computer models.

During the dot.com boom Stuart was headhunted to join a major global telecoms firm working in an “Internet Centric” strategy team. Reporting into the Board this team developed and delivered some of the most ambitious ICT transformation projects of the time primarily using internet based technologies. Stuarts primary role was to research and scout new technologies and provide innovation leadership in adopting these technologies.

Stuart acquired marketing agency Wood Holmes in 2008 and transformed the agency into an innovation company focussing primarily on digital, sustainability, urban and food issues.

He has worked for corporates and governments around the world including NUS, O2, Bouygues, Deloittes, HSBC, SABIC, BT, Cisco, Johnson Controls, Marks & Spencers, BBC and the Design Council.

Stuart has extensive knowledge and a research interest in complex systems theory and in particular the understanding of complexity in innovation and change management. He was a member of The Complexity Research Group at London School of Economics and was also an advisor to the British Urban Regeneration Association (BURA) on Futures & Scenario Planning

Stuart has presented keynotes at several conferences as well as publishing a number of papers and articles.