Melanie Lewis, Expert/Enabler-in-Residence at the Incubator
“I bring a lifetime of disparate experience centred on the environment that’s really important for understanding the processes of change and innovation, and the complexities we are up against.”
Mel has been a fixed value at Incubator since she joined our team as Expert-in-Residence in June 2021. She created and leads the Design Think Challenge ‘Let’s Get Wasted’, which redesigns how participants approach problem solving and engage in social innovation. She’s been instrumental in developing the HDR Expansivity Program, our Student START Program, the Design Thinking Program and delivering elements of the MQ Incubator Educate Program designed specifically for startups.
But Mel’s involvement with the Incubator extends back long before 2021. Both her and her partner Mark, Co-Founder of resident Crewmojo, have been fixtures here since about 2017. Mel is founder of FOOD4FACE®, a startup aimed at disrupting the way we tackle ‘eco-friendliness’ within the cosmetics industry; analysing every part of the supply chain to ensure a force for good in what she calls ‘next practice’, rather than best practice that she believes reinforces status-quo thinking.
Around the same time, she enrolled in the Design Thinking (DT) pilot program run by Lars Groeger and Lara Moroko of the MGMS Business School. Having a background as a scientist in marine biology, Mel had dealt a lot with the problem side of things. With the importance of pre-planning beaten into her throughout undergrad and postgraduate research, little room was left for her entrepreneurial mindset. “As an entrepreneur you deal with uncertainty and ambiguity, you don’t know the ending. That’s when I found Design Thinking and realised I needed to challenge my highly scientific view of things. It was a journey of intentional unlearning really.” DT made her look at change on a larger scale and, instead of stating the problem, she wanted to be part of the solution. So she parked her start-up and “jumped ship” to start her PhD. “I’ve had this really varied vocational background, but it’s always pivoted around that central point of the environment and making products and services more eco-friendly and better for the planet long term. Basically, I wanted to learn how to accelerate the uptake of innovations in the climate change realm. I still haven’t figured that out – it’s a work in progress.”
Owing to the success of DT broadening her mindset, Mel has become an avid spokesperson for teaching DT to Incubator startups and students. She sees huge potential for it to redesign the way higher education teaches people and draws them towards social innovation, in line with the growing need of people to feel a sense of purpose. “A lot of people disengage with their creativity through formal education, but innovation is crucial, and as an EiR I can bring some of that in and get Founders thinking about a new mindset around creative problem solving that helps whole societies.” Mel has also been vocal about the fact she’s an Enabler-in-Residence, not necessarily an Expert-in-Residence. “I want to help enable more creative thinking in business, so we can produce better designs, produce better products and services and even create better systems that ultimately help the planet heal.”
On what she brings to the Incubator and its cohort, she says; “Entrepreneurship gives everyone a chance to break into business. Think of our cohort now, it’s really diverse - people from all different backgrounds. We’re not just talking to business students. That’s what I love and that’s what’s going to change the world. It’s supporting and helping those different thinkers to get their ideas in the world. That’s what I bring.”