Hi, We’re Hethel Innovation
Who Are Hethel Innovation?
Hethel Innovation’s purpose is to support any business that is innovating. We champion game-changing businesses; the innovating businesses and their people who seek to do what others feel cannot be reached or achieved. We are customer centric to our core, exclusively business-led. Our success is measured only by the impact on those we seek to support.
- We create a working Solution-Based Culture. Enabling innovation knowledge to be exchanged and challenged. We know what essential Game Changing insight is coming, and we know what’s with us now.
- We scope, create, build, and operate Sites of Innovation Excellence, specific to sector, location, and needs. These sites are key centres of inspiration and excellence.
- We work exclusively with trusted business partners and networks, we support with the ‘day to day’ and the ‘day tomorrow’ by curating knowledge and building clusters, communities, and local supply chains.
We are specialists in innovation, incubation and scale up space and have supported over 800 businesses to grow through the space and support services we offer. We build and create clusters, creating networks that stimulate localised economic development. We run three successful innovation sites in Norfolk: Hethel Engineering Centre, Scottow Enterprise Park, and Broadland Food Innovation Centre, and we support over 150 current members.
Space to Grow
We give people the space they need to develop and grow their business through the provision of flexible hotdesking, office and workshop space at our incubators – Hethel Engineering Centre, Scottow Enterprise Park and Broadland Food Innovation Centre.
Business Insight
We help businesses to find creative and innovative solutions to challenges they face. Through our bespoke advice, workshops and consultancy we help organisations to access investment, adopt new skills and technology, and use innovative thinking to create actionable strategies for growth. Find out more about how we can support your business.
Connected Communities
We bring together the skills, resources and ideas of our communities to work towards common goals . Our approach is to create innovation communities around our hubs. These innovation communities help grow the knowledge economy which transform the local area. The knowledge economy provides high paid, high skilled job opportunities supported by innovative and entrepreneurial leaders and businesses.
A word from Sargi
Hear the latest from our CEO, Chris Sargisson:
“At Hethel Innovation, our primary purpose is to support any business that is innovating. We are the true champion for the gamechangers: our success is only measured by the impact on those we seek to support. We’re in a really exciting period of growth at the company and have exciting plans in place to widen our support offer and create new sites of Innovation Excellence. Please reach out to anyone in our team to find out more!”
Our Impact
888
Businesses Upskilled
106
Startups Facilitated
1590
Jobs Created
166
New Products Processes and Services Supported
73
New Products Processes and Services to Market
130
Collaborations Formed
Staff
We’re a dynamic group of individuals who are passionate about what we do and dedicated to delivering the best results for our clients.
Imogen Shipperlee
Head of Innovation
My role as Head of Innovation is to oversee all our innovation and business support activity, ensuring that we live up to our purpose to create economic growth in the regions that we operate. I’m responsible for defining the strategic direction of Hethel Innovation’s innovation activity and identifying new growth opportunities for the business (including new sites for us to operate), as well as and working with our fantastic Innovation Team to develop the support packages we have on offer.
Andrew Narayn-Barrow
Head of Estate at Hethel Engineering Centre
My role as Head of Estate is to oversee the Hethel Engineering Centre, from strategy, to operations, to finance, to community, ultimately it is my responsibility! On the day-to-day, my wonderful team keep the centre running, and so my focus is on supporting them in their ability to do that. Larger projects and strategy are obviously a big part of my role, where we look at improvements we can make to site and what would best benefit the community of businesses here.
From our Members
“Some credit due to Hethel Innovation here. Finding facilities that can felx to your requirements can be very difficult, as Tania Saxby says Chris Sargission and his team have been fantastic in facilitating our growth. So many incubation spaces are, in reality, little more than office space but the truth is that good incubation space needs to be well thought out to facilitate the growth of organisations with a range of different requirements. Hethel Innovation is doing a great job.” – Matthew Lumsden CEO Connected Energy
“As a creative marketing agency, we attended the Lean thinking introduction as we were interested in seeing how the principles of Lean could be applied to the marketing sector and just to increase our knowledge of the subject, the session with Shahid proved just how relevant and valuable it is across all industries, not just engineering or manufacturing sectors.
Using the TIMWOODS model, we identified areas of waste that were potentially impacting our efficiency, particularly Waiting—such as delays in client feedback—and Defects, like avoidable re-edits due to miscommunication.
Shahid delivered the session with real clarity, energy, and a down-to-earth approach that made it easy to relate Lean principles to our own processes.”
– Mike Tree Frog
Through our cluster development work, we’ve been working with key stakeholders to better understand the opportunity that Norfolk has to build a seaweed economy, focusing on three areas:
- Scoping farming methods and species, as well as co-location opportunities for seaweed aquaculture.
- Understanding Norfolk’s production capability of seaweed-based products, including foods and bioplastics.
- Developing a roadmap for industry and Algae Cluster development.
