12 People of Waterstons – Alex Waterston

Alex started his career as a game developer working on games like Crash Bandicoot and the Lego franchise, then made mobile apps for businesses like Skyscanner and Readers Digest – even making one for Quality Meat Scotland that included a way of measuring how thick a steak was to get accurate cooking instructions.

After a short time at a London agency learning how to pitch, he landed at Waterstons as a consultant, then looked after the data team and now here he is as the Associate Director of Innovation and Leadership! But what does that actually mean, and involve? We asked him…

“I help businesses to learn about what's new in the world, to think differently about their problems and to take some risks in looking for solutions.

“We get to surprise people a lot – the team is really smart and does a lot of stuff that on the surface seems a little frivolous, but we almost always find a real business use for the things we do.

“We started the Waterstons Innovation Substack back in the Autumn, and we often surprise people with our thoughtful, pragmatic and sometimes contrary views on hype technologies – but we have over a hundred engaged subscribers and get hundreds of reads each week, so I think we've managed to strike a good combination of practical advice and thoughtful opinion.

“This year I've played with a Boston Dynamics Spot, seen the most amazing 3D printed banana you could ever imagine, visited multiple robotics research labs, watched an aircraft carrier being repaired in dock and been 3D scanned, top to bottom. But the real highlight has been our work with North Star Housing Group. After an innovation workshop, they have four ground breaking projects in flight - exactly what we set out to do with our clients."

And for 2024? “More innovation workshops! We’ve been able to create an Innovation in AI workshop with Microsoft, and have Robotics and Immersive workshops in the pipeline - it's hugely important to us that our clients get involved with real experiments off the back of our workshops, and we've taken great care to make sure they avoid generating loads of ideas that then go nowhere.

“We've already got a robotics project, an IoT sensors project and a Generative AI and Immersive Technologies project off the ground so I'm really excited to see what happens next.”

Want to learn more about how Alex and the team can use the latest innovations to solve your business problems? Get in touch at alex.waterston@waterstons.com 

Sign up to the weekly innovation substack for more musings from Alex, Andrew and Katie here: https://waterstonsinnovation.substack.com