nowhere

In 1998 Nick co-founded nowhere as a living experiment in consciousness, creativity and commerciality. nowhere’s core team of creative-catalysts work with global corporations to build cultures of innovation and develop breakthrough strategies, through the power of creative teams and evocative leadership.

WEF

In 2011 Nick was invited to be a founding member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on New Models of Leadership. The Council represents the world’s foremost interdisciplinary brains trust of innovative thinkers on the topic. In 2013 Nick became the Chair of the Council to continue to quest into the new and next generation of leadership skills that we now need to call forward.

CONSULTING

Since the age of 23 Nick has had the privilege of working with executive leaders and teams of major corporations all over the world – catalysing creative insights and collective breakthroughs. This has enabled him over the last two decades to deep-dive into a diverse array of business sectors including: agribusiness, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, oil & gas, banking, FMCG, retail, hi-tech, bio-tech, media and broadcasting, mobile telecommunications, internet, the health and beauty industry, high-end engineering, trading, drinks & beverages…

PhD

In the mid-nineties Nick completed his doctoral research into the heuristics of mindfulness. His work focused on developing a blueprint for catalysing creative insight and collective breakthrough by design, whereby we are changed and transformed through moments of peak performance and optimal experience – enabling the best possible version of ourselves to turn up more frequently and for longer periods of time.

DESIGN

Nick originally graduated as a Product Designer. He was fascinated by how design creates the material world around us. While no longer designing three-dimensional objects, he now designs transformational journeys and breakthrough interventions that tap into the collective intelligence of teams, organisations and complex eco-systems.

CROHN'S DISEASE

At the age of sixteen Nick was diagnosed with Crohn's Disease. After numerous major operations he learned how emotional lows enable creative highs, and how important it is to find moments of creative stillness. This period of his life helped him feel into why it is important for leaders to be bigger than the greatest disturbance in the room or system that they are accountable to change.

ZEN

As a response to his illness Nick sought the meaning of life. He didn’t find the answer but found some great questions that led him to Zen. He became mesmerised by how its disciplines are designed to liberate; and how creative tension, and the breaking down of ego, assumptions, beliefs and orthodoxies, always precede a creative breakthrough.

DRAWING

Nick also spent many years teaching life drawing – the act of seeking meaningful connections formed through new seeing and ordering. He learned how creativity is the awareness that emerges out of the creative tension between possibilities and limitations. And, he discovered how to shift belief systems through the power of disbelief – “I didn’t know I could do that”.

DTG

In the mid-nineties Nick co-founded the Design Transformation Group (DTG) – a not-for-profit multi-disciplined, learning community of designers, artists, educationalists, philosophers, consultants and futurologists, who were all passionate about shaping the future business of design. This is where he learned how to leverage diversity, harness new and novel intersections, hold creative tension, and lean into the untapped spaces that lie between us.

B-BOY

Nick is a B-Boy at heart, growing up in the eighties with breakdancing and hip-hop. Catching the ‘break’ and drawing beautiful lines in the world, through practice, practice and more practice, led to his first ‘flow’ experiences. Yes, that's Nick on the floor.

DJ

As his body stopped him from ‘breaking’, he shifted to DJ-ing. Nick learned to lead people on a journey, taking them up and then down – catalysing moments, and extended moments, whereby people lost themselves, and at the same time become more than themselves. This taught him to see organisational transformation as a choreography of layered rhythms, rather than the project management of linear processes and tasks.

FAMILY

Last, but far from least, is Nick’s family. A lucky husband and proud father, Nick lives in Surrey, England, riding the creative-rollercoaster of both life and work.