Our team
Adrian Bracewell
Engineering
Alex Chrysandreas
Product & Design
Angela Maurer
Head of Tesco Labs
Carl Knibbs
Product & Design
Deepsona Das
Engineering
Harry Betteridge
Product & Design
Jamie Holmes
Engineering
Jeremy Sanders
Engineering
Jessica Watkins
Research & Open Innovation
Krishnan Ramaswami
Head of Tesco Labs (India)
Kunal Ramkumar
Engineering & Data Science
Lucia Del Prete
Research & Open Innovation
Meenakshi Bhattacharya
Product & Design
Nitin Gupta
Engineering
Pablo Coberly
Engineering
Paul Wilkinson
Research & Open Innovation
Ross Arnone
Product & Design
Sophie Caley
Product & Design
Vicky Sainter
Engineering
Our manifesto
We are a catalyst for change
- We tackle the most significant opportunities and challenges to Tesco, without operational constraints, and in doing so pave the way for others.
- We ensure that our focus is on exploring products now that will help shape Tesco in the long term.
- We encourage our colleagues to be catalysts for change too by running hackathons, secondments and open workshops that teach them new skills and give them the confidence to share and prototype their own ideas.
We build our reputation through innovation
- Our reputation is built on our outputs and our methods.
- We encourage colleagues, academics and entrepreneurs to collaborate with us so that we can tackle the most pressing problems together.
- We nurture, incubate and develop ideas.
We are a trusted source on emerging technology
- We keep track of emerging trends to prepare us for the future and to avoid surprises.
- We aim to be the first port of call for both colleagues and suppliers, supported by a broad expertise and a legacy of innovation.
We focus on outcomes
- We are informed by foresight and insight and design Minimum Viable Products to achieve our outcomes, avoiding re-invention.
- Our deliverables are the knowledge, insight and validated learning which can be used to support business cases and develop new customer propositions.
- We value our intuition whilst validating it with data and customer research.
- We make all of our opportunities and challenges visible, along with their hypotheses, findings and next steps.
We have a story to tell
- We use storytelling as a tool to inspire others, to change perceptions and to shift mind-sets by joining the dots and showing what could be possible.
- We share our work and what we have learnt in a compelling and relevant way.
We make great use of the lab
- We use our lab space, both physically and virtually, to bring ideas to life and provide a Tesco context for new technology.
- Our space allows us to demonstrate the value of our work, to educate others and to build strong relationships quickly.
We have an appetite for learning
- We prioritise learning and the sharing of knowledge – a broad perspective and deeper understanding provides us with a greater ability to add value and create something unique.
- We learn both independently and as part of the projects we undertake.
- We proactively engage in and contribute to internal and external communities, including conferences, events and meetups.
We contribute to the wider community
- We take opportunities to engage with our colleagues so that we are well connected.
- We share knowledge, resources and contribute code as an active member of the Tesco Technology and Product communities, which allows us to influence strategy whilst increasing our own capability.
Our lab
We set out to create (on a very modest budget) a multi-purpose room that we could use to show our work and try to inspire people from all over the business into thinking about new ways of doing things. Building a culture of innovation across the business is really important to us and we can play a big part in enabling that.
We have a number of demos set up in the room that we can show to stakeholders. These come from a huge variety of sources; hackathon projects and other solutions we’ve built ourselves, collaborations we’re working on with some of our larger suppliers and great ideas from startups we’ve found.
We also hold events in the lab to talk about some of the projects we’re working on internally – we think there’s no point in trying to solve big problems on your own and not telling anyone about it. From time to time we’ll also invite interesting external speakers to come in and talk.
Tucked away in the corner we’ve got a small makerspace – this is still a bit of a work in progress but we have a couple of 3D printers and some basic electronics equipment. We use these to prototype new hardware solutions we’re working on and often support other areas of the business if they need a quick print too!
