Jim Scully

Founding Partner | Tumu Mātāmua
New Zealand

Jim is dedicated to releasing peoples’ collective innovation potential to create change that matters for the world – business, agency, NGO and at the intersection of all.  He believes we owe it to our children to be more innovative together.

Because he’s stood in their leadership shoes, Jim is a trusted ally to senior leaders who are challenged to create tomorrow while they manage today.  During his career, he’s successfully pioneered design thinking in the New Zealand public sector, built a lasting innovation capability, started up a business and led transformation teams across multiple countries.

Jim’s accomplishments also include assisting a major Australasian public transport provider pivot their organisation to be authentically customer-centred; helping policy leaders re-imagine their framework for a high performing, future-positioned policy system; and ensuring national planners considered human factors when designing a smarter suburb.  Other projects include supporting a CEO to engage his whole organisation to develop a 10-year plan and collaborating with an export business to deeply understand their customers.

Jim is on two innovation panels; the UN Development Programme’s Innovation/Design Panel and New Zealand’s Better by Design panel. He has business and mechanical engineering qualifications, attended the IIT Institute of Design BootCamp and was recently part of a CEO study tour to New York. Jim is regularly invited to share his experience with NZ and international audiences through presentations and articles.

Work and thoughts

Reimagining Systems through Storytelling
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The Power of Intention: Steering Towards a Future by Design, Not Default
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