Albanian-born linguistics academic, design thinker and entrepreneur Julia Goga Cooke runs GConsultancy Innovation, a self-described ‘eco-system of experienced innovation managers, journalists, communicators, trainers, facilitators, designers and consultants.’ GConsultancy, which is the end result of Julia’s extremely diverse and high-flying career, helps organisations to create the perfect conditions and capabilities for innovation. The business has recently achieved IOEE Academy status.

At the beginning of the 90s, Julia, now 58, had completed a PhD in linguistics, and as one of the country’s few conference interpreters, was recruited by the United Nations Development Programme, which arrived in Albania when communism fell.

“It was my first school in collaboration,” says Julia, who found herself coordinating the aid agencies that poured into her country. In 1992 her talent was spotted by the BBC, which was about to begin broadcasting from London to the Balkans in Albanian, as Julia recalls:

“I moved to London at the beginning of 1993 and worked for the BBC for 16 years. I was the head of the Albanian Service during the Kosovo war, the Albanian upheavals and Macedonian uprisings. I had a team of journalists in London and a team of journalists in the Balkans. The BBC Albanian Service was by far the most trusted and listened to broadcaster in the region. After that I worked for BBC Global News, which brought together broadcasting in English and in 33 other languages, World TV and news online, as coordinating editor, in charge of the big world stories and as ambassador for Global News.”

Even at this relatively early stage in her career, Julia was honing a talent for cultivating innovation, preparing the ground for later adventures.

“I didn’t think of it at the time, but I managed innovation in my various roles at the BBC, overseeing new programmes and new ways of working. I even won an award for innovation with my team when we took Question Time to Kosovo and did it in three languages with Serbians, Albanians and internationals on the panel and in the audience, in the divided town of Mitrovica. It was something the UN had not done at the time – an absolutely amazing event. Later on the model was used in other areas where people lived across divides.”

Julia left the BBC in 2008 aged 50 and took a gap year to decide how she wanted to spend the remainder of her working life. During that year she returned to university, this time studying for a master’s degree in Innovation Management at Central Saint Martins in London, as well as doing a course in creating new ventures at London Business School. So, how did Julia consolidate her new life of enterprise learning and the world she had just left behind at the BBC?

“During my BBC years, while I was doing the hard stuff of news, in a world really dark with war and conflict, each evening I would go to Central Saint Martins and do all sorts of courses, learning about fashion design, user experience and the ideas factory. For me, that was the beautiful world of art and design keeping me sane amidst the hard world of news.”

Despite being unclear to begin with about what the term ‘innovation management’ actually meant, Julia quickly came to realise that she already had a good grounding in the subject, having practiced it for decades during her career. Soon, the student was honing and broadening her capacity to create fertile ground for true innovation:

“I learned about different types of innovation, and got passionate about Design Thinking and open innovation, both very new concepts at the time. I learnt that innovation is both a discipline and an art. This sometimes sounds paradoxical because we don’t usually link innovation and creativity to processes, systems and planning. You may have innovation here and there, but that will not give you the competitive advantage we’re all aiming for. The companies that are successful at innovation understand it is too important to be left to R&D and have brought innovation into the DNA of the firm by linking it to business strategy, creating innovation skills and capabilities, nurturing innovation networks. In doing so they are creating a culture of innovation.”

This is the learning that underpins GConsultancy Innovation’s work. Julia and her incredibly learned and diverse team support clients to transform their organisations into places where innovation is nurtured and excellent ideas can quickly become positive change. Julia explains enthusiastically:

“I believe that anybody who has the tools and the processes, and makes it a priority, can innovate. The methodology and toolbox we use is firmly based in trends forecasting, design thinking and story telling. If you bring a company like GConsultancy into a business, we don’t innovate for you, we help you innovate. People on the inside, they know it inside out and by giving them the tools they need and showing them how the processes work, people can come up with results.”

Achieving IOEE Academy status marked an important step in GConsultancy Innovation’s development, as well as on Julia’s personal, professional journey.

“The process of becoming an IOEE Academy was a learning experience for me. I worked with two contacts at the IOEE to go through what makes good practice as an Academy. They helped me see gaps that I hadn’t considered and understand how I could fill them. For example, we have started operating in Albania, where I have set up an Innovation Accelerator. Here in the UK we have Public Liability and insurance for spaces where you do training. But, in Albania, it was important to research these areas and make sure we got them right. As an IOEE Academy we set an example – not only in how we innovate, but in how to create a learning environment where people are safe, secure and free from discrimination. As a boutique studio, I need to have these measures in place, which is what the IOEE has helped me with.”

As well as working for some big corporate names, GConsultancy Innovation also invites individuals onto its training programmes and workshops. Five of the company’s programmes on Design Thinking and Entrepreneurship are IOEE recognised and it’s the IOEE mentoring qualification that Julia is most enthused about:

“I especially want to use this programme in Albania, where enterprise mentoring does not exist as such. I am working with young entrepreneurs to develop their businesses, and they need mentors. And, while you have people there who will volunteer to mentor, it would be good to give them the knowledge of what it means to be a mentor, and how that differs from being an advisor, or a coach. I think that’s a very useful thing to introduce to Albania.”

Julia believes that we’re currently moving into a new era of entrepreneurship, during which we’ll see older generations combining their experiences with the opportunity for lifelong learning to create new ventures and live a life with no retirement.

“When we think about enterprise we often think about young people, but I think more and more we are going to be seeing older people who have had a career, have had their hands full, and who will really want to break away from being employed and become their own bosses. I see this as a real driver for good.”