Andrew
Russell

Innovation Strategy  ·  Mixed Methods Research  ·  Experience Design

8+ years helping Fortune 500 companies develop and execute innovation pipelines – from front-end discovery to strategic frameworks that stick.

8 +
Years consulting experience
14 +
Clients including LEGO, NASA, and Cigna
35 +
Research methods and frameworks
Selected work  →
01  –  About

About

The best research doesn't just answer questions – it changes which questions get asked.

I'm an innovation strategist and researcher with 8+ years of consulting experience helping Fortune 500 companies develop and execute their innovation pipelines.

I balance deep academic grounding with real-world practice, leading cross-functional teams through complex projects in highly regulated industries. I utilize a customized design-thinking process paired with proven mixed methods approaches to create measurable impact.

Approach

Great strategic leadership rests on three principles:

01Connection. The ability to connect disparate data, ideas, people, and processes to accelerate innovation. I read a room quickly – sensing what people actually think and feel, not just what they say in a workshop – and use that to bring the right people and ideas together at the right moment.

02Clarity. The ability to bring a common understanding and build alignment across stakeholder groups. I translate complexity into language that meets each audience where they are – speaking the dialect of executives, designers, and frontline teams.

03Curation. The ability to cut through the noise and focus on what really matters. I have an innate ability to quickly differentiate between what information is critical for strategic objectives and what information is merely interesting.

Andrew Russell

Expertise

Innovation strategy Research design Workshop facilitation Qualitative research Quantitative research Systems thinking Service design User experience

Methods

Strategy and Framing Front-end innovation Opportunity framing Value proposition development Jobs-to-be-done Road mapping Qualitative In-depth interviews Expert interviews Ethnography Contextual inquiry Observation Online discussion boards Moderation Diary studies Focus groups Metaphor elicitation Quantitative Surveying Cluster analysis Conjoint analysis KANO modelling MaxDiff scaling Statistical analysis Customer segmentation Analysis and Synthesis Affinity diagramming Thematic analysis Grounded theory Framework development Insight generation Card sorting Usability testing Facilitation and Co-design Design thinking facilitation Executive alignment workshops Co-creation sessions Participatory design Concept testing Prototype testing Outputs Journey maps Personas Empathy maps Mental models Process maps Workflow maps Service blueprints Strategic road maps Archetypes

Sectors

Financial services Healthcare Life sciences Retail / CPG E-commerce Government Education

Clients

Financial Services Morgan Stanley S&P Global KPMG ACT Rep4 Healthcare and Life Sciences Cigna DentaQuest Myriad Genetics Medline Retail, CPG, and E-commerce LEGO Frito-Lay eBay Education and Research NASA Institute of Design
02  –  Work

Work

Service Strategy  ·  Life Sciences

Crafting Workflows for Precision Medicine Integration

2024

8 in-depth interviews with SMEs across business units to map the sales-to-implementation process for a precision medicine company. Output: a 6-phase process framework – from Belief and Access through Grow – now used for onboarding and strategic initiative planning.

2024

Mixed Methods  ·  Financial Services

Defining the Value Proposition for a New Online Bank

2022

Segmentation survey (n=2,000, k-means cluster analysis) paired with 30 remote IDIs to define the value proposition for a new online-only bank. Delivered 4 personas and journey maps. Client launched with multiple deposit products; digital communications saw high engagement.

2022

Qualitative Research  ·  Education

Building Entry Points into STEM Learning for High School Students

2018

18 remote IDIs with high school students nationwide to understand STEM engagement drivers and barriers. Synthesised into persona and journey map spanning middle school through high school. Informed product design and market entry value proposition for the K-12 education sector.

2018

Critical Design  ·  Speculative Hardware

EPICAC

2025

A working homage to Kurt Vonnegut’s 1950 short story – an AI on a Raspberry Pi that wrote 500 love letters before printing “goodbye world” and terminating. A critical look at how readily we anthropomorphize AI, and how easily we discard it.

2025

Personal Research Infrastructure  ·  Local AI

ERIS

2026 – Ongoing

A fully local document retrieval system built on the principle that a good system should retrieve and cite, not summarise and synthesise – running on a Raspberry Pi with no documents leaving the machine.

2026
03  –  Writing
04  –  Contact

Contact

Let's work on something worth doing.

Open to senior research and strategy roles, consulting engagements, and conversations about where design and AI are headed.

Resume  (PDF)  → GitHub  → Observable  →