Innovation Leader I Corporate Research & Development, 3M
Ben Watson is a widely recognised international expert in the field of innovation management and strategic innovation leadership, with over 20 years of innovation impact and technology transfer success. Leading and developing teams, large portfolios of innovation initiatives and building new businesses. This experience ranges from the consumer product domain, to the factory-of-the-future, wearable IoT (Internet of Things), new human-machine interactions, artificial-intelligence, transport systems for smart cities and autonomous vehicle infrastructure; leveraging a PhD in human centred systems design. -Ben now leads international teams to develop new fields of research, to initiate innovation programmes for transfer success at 3M.
Ben’s work also includes the development of International (ISO), European (CEN) and British Standards (BSI) for innovation and design management, in addition to his role as trustee and councilor for the Institution of Engineering Designers, he holds a fellowship with the Institution of Innovation and Knowledge Exchange (IKE), and advisory partnership to the Materials and Design Exchange (MaDE).