Contributors
WBD is once again celebrating the coming together of UK and US colleagues, who took part in Northumbrian Water Group's (NWG) Innovation Festival.
The NWG Innovation Festival was held exclusively online this year and brought together thousands of companies, organisations and businesses worldwide to take part in a series of workshops and virtual activities such as design sprints, data hacks and daily dashes, all with a view to encourage collaboration and innovation between different businesses and sectors to identify solutions to some of the environmental and societal challenges facing the globe currently.
WBD, who sponsored the Festival, organised a design sprint to explore how businesses can embed and embrace a culture of innovation and explore means of incentivising this innovation and bolster employee engagement. The design sprint was led by colleagues Kate Ashworth (UK), Katie Zimmerman (US), Nick Verna (US), Oliver Rickett (UK) and Thomas McCall (UK) from the Firm's Transatlantic Lawyer Network. The session follows a twelve month period where, alongside colleagues Imogen Armstrong (UK) and Kristin Lamb (US) and Matar Diouf (US), they have been exploring innovation within WBD's own business across both sides of the Atlantic.
WBD has a strong focus on innovation, the firm is ranked highly in the FT's Top 50 Most Innovative Law Firms in Europe and it also has a dedicated Innovation Group that works with its lawyers and clients to help identify new opportunities of delivering efficiencies and coordinate initiatives and projects across the Firm that will help drive the business - and, importantly, its clients - forward.
Head of Innovation and the WBD Newcastle Office, Nigel Emmerson, commented:
"WBD has always embraced new technologies and innovative practices as it has grown as a Firm. Following the combination of Bond Dickinson and Womble Carlyle, we have spent time analysing the respective practices across our new business and our Transatlantic Lawyer Network has been focusing, in particular on our uses of innovation, and how we can embed the innovative resources already at our disposal further into our day-to-day business bringing benefits to our staff and clients".
"With our own experience of exploring this topic, it has been great to once again collaborate with our US colleagues and take part in NWG's Innovation Festival this year and explore this topic further".
WBD has deep roots in the North East and its largest UK office of over 200 qualified advisors is based in Newcastle. It is committed to playing its part in the future prosperity of the North East and Cumbria by using its local, national and international reach and expertise to benefit the region's leading sectors, businesses, people and organisations.
