Future Cities Catapult

Founder of Disruptive Urbanism, Paula Hirst, was employed in 2014 as the Executive Director for Integrated City Systems at the Future Cities Catapult, a new UK a technology and innovation centre established to support UK business in accessing new market opportunities within UK and global cities arising as a result of urbanisation, demographic, technological, and climate change. Formed by the UK Government’s innovation arm ‘Innovate UK’ the previous year, the organisation needed to establish itself quickly and efficiently to achieve the outputs set out within its initial business plan. 

Paula was the lead Director for market development, urban development and infrastructure, financing and investment, and after six months her responsibilities were broadened to include human resources. In this role Paula oversaw the development of organisational policies, supporting with organisational design and development, resource planning, and management to enable the organisation to grow rapidly from less than 10 to 50 employees within a year. 

Paula was also the executive lead overseeing the refinement of the Catapult’s business model. This commenced in August 2014 culminating in a new business plan in January 2015, and included clarifying the value proposition, service offering and methodologies, and defining mechanisms for developing, managing, and reporting on projects and programmes. 

With management responsibility for both programme development and human resources, Paula was able to support the rest of the Director team in recruiting appropriate staff to deliver against their areas of responsibility, and their employees to understand how their work could be best be delivered to support the organisation’s objectives.