What does Adaptive Edge do?

Adaptive Edge is a UK strategy and innovation consultancy. We help organisations decide what to change, then make the change real: strategy built with the people who must carry it, AI adoption inside real work, and behaviour change that sticks.

How is Adaptive Edge different from a traditional strategy consultancy?

We do not hand over a deck and leave. Strategy is made in working sessions with your own teams, so the people who must deliver it own it from day one. We prove an approach in one team before asking the whole organisation to change.

Who does Adaptive Edge work with?

Global organisations across healthcare, industrials, media, retail technology and financial services, including ITAB Group, Freudenberg, Sky and Sandvik Coromant. Engagements run across Europe and beyond, remote and on site.

How does Adaptive Edge approach AI adoption?

We put AI to work inside real workflows rather than running abstract training. Teams learn on their own live work, we measure what actually changes, and we scale only what proves useful.

What does a typical engagement look like?

Most engagements combine focused research, co-created working sessions, and hands-on tools built for your context. They range from a single workshop to a multi-phase transformation programme.

How do we start a conversation?

Use the contact form on the site. We usually begin with a short call to understand the decision you are facing, and we will tell you plainly if we are not the right fit.

AstraZeneca: Building Human-Centred Design Capability

Client: AstraZeneca

The Challenge

How can we take a more customer-centric approach to our work across a global pharmaceutical organisation facing multiple industry challenges?

Our Approach

AstraZeneca launched 'Our future reimagined', a global transformation programme designed to address fundamental challenges facing the pharmaceutical industry: accelerating digitalisation, evolving supply chain demands, and the need for better patient outcomes. The programme's ambition was to become more patient-centred, harness data more intelligently, and drive genuine system alignment.

I was brought in through Treehouse Innovation to design and lead a series of intensive two-day workshops with programme teams. My focus was accelerating their understanding and application of design thinking to real transformation challenges. Working with the supply chain team, we shaped an exploration around a critical yet overlooked scenario in clinical trials: how medication moves from production to patients. We examined label information, container capacity, and crate distribution.

We taught the leadership team to run empathic interviews. Through interviews with supply chain colleagues, the team uncovered a striking pattern. The very people responsible for getting medication to patients weren't being brought into decisions early enough. This created unnecessary logistical challenges and a culture of blame when delays occurred. Problems that could have been prevented through earlier collaboration. Crucially, we discovered that supply chain colleagues deeply cared about patient outcomes but felt excluded from the conversations that mattered most. We designed role play exercises and facilitated dialogue that helped the team reimagine how they could work together.

The Impact

These insights drove tangible system change. New requirements were integrated into Merlin, the platform controlling the entire clinical process. The system was redesigned to ensure all stakeholders have a voice from the outset, embedding supply chain considerations early in planning. This has reduced delays, eliminated preventable bottlenecks, and ultimately improved outcomes for the patients who depend on timely access to medication.

Our Role

Served as the design lead for Treehouse Innovation, overseeing the full human-centred design process for AstraZeneca and roll-out. I helped guide the insight work, created the workshop flow, facilitated empathy-building activities, and supported leaders in developing system-level changes grounded in real patient and staff experience.