“You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.” – Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States, 1913–1921

Birthing the new

Prospero is the latest manifestation to emerge from my lifelong quest to find ever-better ways of bringing forth truly original creations (products, services, facilities such as this website, enterprises, events, community initiatives and so on) that have the potential to generate widespread value, infuse people’s lives with meaning and joy, and enrich the world. Prospero is a philosophy and practice that can be used on its own, or in conjunction with design thinking, Agile or another now-to-new method.

Find out how Prospero compares with design thinking

Skip the backstory and browse the index

Retracing footsteps

I grew up in an east London funeral parlour and left school when I turned 16, embarking on a succession of jobs in music publishing, fashion, retail and advertising before establishing Leith & Price, a company that helped advertising agencies and media owners pinpoint new business prospects and communicate with them effectively.

After leaving Leith & Price, I was a founding partner in three consulting practices: Innovatics, thenew.org and The Innovation Agency. These firms combined a bone-deep understanding of the now-to-new process with emerging practice in the fields of organisation development, leadership development, team development and people development, thereby enabling clients to respond to tough challenges in a comprehensive and method-independent manner.

I was instrumental in bringing Open Space Technology, a participant-driven conference method, to the UK after experiencing it for the first time in 1988 at an international conference on organisation transformation.

Some years later, I moved to Amsterdam were I established The Centre for Large Group Interventions and helped senior managers use Open Space, Future Search, Real Time Strategic Change and other ‘whole system in the room’ methods to address strategic and operational challenges.

My services have been commissioned by a wide range of businesses and nonprofit organisations including ABN Amro Bank, Department of Health, European Commission, GlaxoSmithKline, Home Office, Imagination, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, McCain Foods, NHS, Nederlandse Spoorwegen (Dutch Railways), PricewaterhouseCooopers, Royal Dutch Shell, and WH Smith.

I write extensively on management and organisational topics and was a member of the team that produced Organisations & People, the journal of the Association for Management Education and Development, where I sat on the governing council.

Places where where I’ve led workshops and development programmes include London Business School, University of Brighton, London School of Economics, Roffey Park Institute and Hult Ashridge.

Creating alone, creating together and helping others create

As well as conducting my own Prospero projects, I take part in collaborative projects and serve as an advisor to the principals of several boutique consulting practices.

Enriching the world

Watch the video of my five-minute talk, Enriching the world: Is it good business practice?

I gave the talk in front of 200 people at an Ignite event held at the Tobacco Factory in Bristol. The 20 slides accompanying the talk auto-advance every 15 seconds. I just about managed to keep up with them.


Inviting you to explore further

I invite you to browse the index, see what catches your eye, and make some new discoveries. Most of the articles are about Prospero work specifically. A few are about now-to-new work in general.
Prospero is a particular type of now-to-new approach
Please message me if there’s something you’d like to discuss.

Thanks for stopping by.

Jack