About
Justin leads Orange Canopy Consulting, named after the resilient bitter orange trees that grow over his Auckland home. These symbolise principles of resilience, abundance, brightness, and sustained growth. Justin has over 20 years innovation and improvement experience in the financial and healthcare sectors.
A blackbelt in Lean Six Sigma and DINZ Purple Pin winning design thinker, Justin excels in synthesising complex information, capturing strategic opportunities, and establishing pathways for meaningful change.
Justin does this through a variety of innovation tools and methods (LSE, UVA Darden School of Business), through strong relationships, and unlocking the potential of people to grow and thrive.
Recent initiatives in Health innovation are described below. Prior to this design innovation work Justin simplified processes and reduced wait times for elective surgery. This was after working in financial services at Kiwibank, BNZ Investments and Insurance, Deutsche Bank, and ANZ Funds Management, in a variety of optimisation and improvement roles.
In addition Justin has served not-for-profit governance at the Independent Living Service, Te Tītoki Mataora research translation funding, and the New Zealand Health Design Council.
Ara Manawa, Innovation and Design Studio, Auckland Hospital
Prior to freelance consulting, Justin created Ara Manawa in 2018, an in-hospital product, spatial, service, digital and product design team. Described as an “acupuncture needle” by collaborators, Ara Manawa facilitated design-led innovation at Auckland Hospital, delivering meaningful solutions for patients and clinicians.
To turn the hospital inside out for innovation, and access capability and capacity, Justin grew a team of two into a team of 17 product, spatial, graphic, digital, and service designers. Justin developed industry and University partnerships, across New Zealand in a range of fields including Bio-Engineering, Architecture, Veterinary Product Design, Creative Writing, History, through to Computer Science.
Highlights
Sympoiesis: Health Research Council funded research into the enablers for successful innovation in a hospital setting. This work informed the processes and systems for innovation at Auckland City Hospital, from triage to resourcing innovations, project execution and partnership with industry and universities. Sympoiesis created a dedicated clinician incubator, with start-up mentoring and guidance.
Whānau Room Refurbishment: 45 inpatient whānau rooms, incorporating co-design processes and funded by philanthropic donations. Small, windowless rooms refurbished with circadian rhythm lighting, new furnishings, a bespoke mural design for wayfinding and reflecting the intent of the whānau rooms as envisaged by the hospital Chief of Tikanga, Dame Naida Glavish.
Studio 160: Establishment of a new low cost, flexible site accomodating complementary design, innovation, improvement, EPMO, and digital teams.
DHW Lab, Design Research, Auckland Hospital / AUT Collaboration
The Design for Health and Wellbeing Lab was a temporary collaboration with AUT design school from 2014-2018. It provided design capability to the Hospital, and real world problems for students and researchers at the university.
Justin acted as Hospital co-director of the DHWLab, securing space in the main clinical services building. This enabled clinicians to pop out of surgery or other busy clinical settings to innovate alongside designers.
The Lab received a Purple Pin award at the DINZ Best Awards, with several DHWLab projects winning awards over the life of the Lab. This venture provided a foundation for the establishment of a dedicated in-hospital design team, Ara Manawa, collaboration with multiple universities, and disciplines beyond design.
Highlights
Clinician Apps: Diagnostic support apps for the prescription of Antibiotics and the use of Blood product in surgery put modern digital solutions into the smart phones of clinicians for their day to day clinical work.
Hospital Entrance and Wayfinding: Simplifying and modernising the entry from a new Carpark provided more accessible, understandable, and welcoming thoroughfare and retail solutions. This was co-designed with accessibility representatives from the community and completed in conjunction with Masters level research into Wayfinding issues.
3D Printing: Exploring the potential of 3D print technology for a range of clinical needs ultimately resulted in permanent application of 3D printing to orbital eye-socket surgery as a more efficient solution for shaping titanium implants. In-house product engineering innovation continues to this day.
Orange Canopy Consulting Clients
