Meet The Team

Rob Kerner

Rob Kerner

Partner – Strategy, Innovation & Governance

Experience and Skills

Rob has had a unique career, which spans industries, functions and cultures that bring outside-in thinking to ensure that innovations actually get delivered.

In his first career, he was an F-14 fighter pilot for the US Navy. Besides providing him with countless incredible life experiences, it equipped him with the skills to work in ambiguous, unpredictable, and stressful situations. Perfect skills for the Strategy & Innovation space.

After the Navy, he worked in business in both large corporates (John Deere, HP, RBS) in finance, strategy, and innovation roles, as well as holding various roles in over 10 start-up organisations including managing director.

Delivering on his passion for climate change solutions, starting in 2022, he has been a domain expert at Carbon 13 at Cambridge, advising multiple start-up founders through various stages of growth and scale.

Rob has been described as a person with “an excellent bedside manner” who can be “dropped into any situation, identify the problem, design the solution and ensure it gets delivered”. He is obsessed with helping clients ensure that their strategy and innovation functions deliver value and not theatre.

Rob is a maven for all things innovative, from technology to processes to people. An extreme extrovert, Rob loves to increase his knowledge on topics by meeting specialists in their field. When not working, you might find Rob walking the dog on the North Downs Way, following the same path that pilgrims have walked for centuries.

Technical Skills

  • Strategy Implementation

  • Innovation Team Design

  • Growth and Business Models

  • Innovation Tech Transfer

  • Organisational Design

  • Digital Strategy

Sectors

  • Consumer Technology

  • Banking

  • Climate Change

  • Healthcare

  • Management Consulting

  • Agriculture

  • Military

Key Achievements include:

  • Created a new role and built an innovation team in RBS Personal & Business Banking. Managed the digital portfolio, drove new technologies and created a sustainable innovation process to speed up decisions to delivery, working with the Exco

  • Designed and built a new digital banking proposition focused on providing real value to the ‘underbanked’ while reducing the cost to serve. Led team of 10 from economics, sustainability, HR, IT, customer experience and risk to define proposition

  • Built the US product launch strategy for a Spanish sparkling wine producer, including customer segmentation, pricing, distribution and marketing strategy. Heeding the recommendation, the client decided not to launch in the US, saving a $2,000,000 investment

  • Developed ‘Pay for Performance’ framework for Customer Experience/Trust targets for bank’s annual bonus and long term incentive process to reinforce correct employee behaviour

  • While at both RBS and HP, designed, built and delivered completely new governance models to control complex scenarios. These included linkages to strategy, budget allocation/control and activity tracking

  • International Speaker (primarily keynote) across various Strategy and Innovation topics in the financial and climate change sectors

Rob Can Help You With:

  • Strategy Implementation – ensuring that the strategy is properly delivered across the organisation, risks are mitigated, and opportunities are realised

  • Team Structure – supporting clients with the proper team design in the Strategy & Innovation teams to deliver meaningful results

  • Digital Strategy – creating the right blend of innovative technology and legacy systems to ensure the organisation is driving forward while not breaking

  • Growth Strategy – Building a dynamic strategy that links the vision with the delivery to spot opportunities for growth in the market

Some of Rob’s Clients & Experience: