NatWest Group

Research Consultant

Noggin The Brain People

🧠 Noggin The Brain People 🧠

Sainsbury's Bank

Head of Research, Planning & Brand

Head of Propositions & Innovation

Head of Customer Insight & Innovation

The Marketing Society Scotland

Chair Of Marketing Society Scotland

Heineken UK

Head Of CMI (Consumer & Market Intelligence)

Category Insights Controller

PepsiCo Intl

Consumer Insights For All PepsiCo Portfolio Of Beverage Brands across Western & Eastern Europe

European Consumer & Market Insights Director

PepsiCo

Worked on creating new International Trademarks for PepsiCo to play in exciting growing Asian beverage categories e.g. Healthy Whites (RTD Soymilk/Drinking Yoghurts) in China, India, Vietnam & Thailand.

Asia Regional Innovation Insights Manager

Quorn Foods

Consumer & market insights for the Quorn brand.

Consumer Insight Manager

Procter & Gamble

Consumer & Product Researcher Working In Skin Beauty Care (Oil Of Olay).

Products Research

🧠 Noggin - helping improve the cognitive health of the nation 🧠 | P&G | PepsiCo | Heineken | Sainsbury's |

I have over 25 years of insight, marketing, and innovation leadership experience in FMCG and FS sectors, I know, I don't look THAT old.

I've enjoyed working for some of the world's leading brands in various categories (health & beauty, food & beverages & financial services) and regions, delivering impactful consumer and market intelligence, brand strategy, and product innovation. My time spent working on Oil Of Olay made me my mum's favourite son.

Currently, I'm a research consultant at NatWest Group, where I'm supporting the bank's customer, technology and data-driven approach to enhancing its products and services. 

I'm a co-founder at Noggin The Brain People, on a mission to improve the cognitive health of the nation & founding investor in Gutzy Organic which makes having a healthy, happy gut, fun and easy. Active investor in the technology & health & wellness arena.

I'm a former chair and current fellow of the Marketing Society in Scotland.

Mick Doran

AI will not make everyone smarter.

It will make intelligence abundant though.

And there is a difference.

We already live in a world where knowledge is effectively unlimited if you think about it.

Every book ever written, every lecture, every research paper is potentially a few keystrokes away.

But has it improved our curiosity, our discipline or our creativity?
 
The bottleneck is not access to intelligence. The bottleneck is what you do with it.

I'm loving this book The Next Renaissance by Zack Kass. 

Finally a book that acknowledges the risks but ultimately lands on an optimistic conclusion, that AI is expanding human capability in ways we are only beginning to understand.

It's packed full of wisdom & a must read.

The Marketing Society Scotland Graeme Atha Joanne Lynn will look to summarise for next week

Megan Hastings Lindsay Jamie Mcfarlane Mungo Kilgour 👀

Watch this space. (Yes, I’m keeping the pun.)

Our now 12 year old son Michael is putting the finishing touches to Things I Taught My Parents About SPACE 3, his latest charity book where he's going to share facts about what’s going on above our heads.

This time we’re backing MS Society Scotland and we’ve set ourselves a big target to raise £10,000.

He’s grown up since book one (below) but still happy to share the limelight with other authors.

If you can help us hit the target, the ask is simple:
 👉 share this,
 👉 tell anyone who's interested in space, who isn't
 👉 and check the website (I’ll drop it in the comments).

Launch soon. And yes, we’ll need all hands on deck. 🚀

Dr. Clara Doran MBBS MRCGP

Aldi UK he may have taken creative inspiration from you folks 👀 

#ThingsITaughtMyParents #charity #MSSociety

🚀 COMING SOON 

During lockdown, our son Michael started teaching Dr. Clara Doran MBBS MRCGP & I things about space.

We helped him write his space facts down and produced a book.

We raised over £3,000 for Fairy Bricks & Scottish Book Trust & €10,000 for the Alzheimer Society of Ireland

This time, we're aiming higher.

"Things I Taught My Parents About Space 3" is coming. 

We want to raise £10,000 for the MS Society Scotland.

1 in 500 people live with MS in the UK but that no. is 1 in 300 in Scotland.
Dr. Clara Doran MBBS MRCGP is one of these.

We need help.

We're looking for: 
✅ Sponsors and partners who want to back something genuinely special 
✅ People willing to share this with their networks & generate some interest
✅ Anyone who loves space or wants to support a cause that matters

Over the last number of years we found proof that curiosity + kindness = something extraordinary.

If this lands with you tag someone who loves space, or drop a comment below. Even a share can help as we finish this book and get it out in the world.

👉 Find out more at our website details in the comments section: 

#MSSociety #SpaceBooks #CharityChallenge #ThingsITaughtMyParents #Scotland #Fundraising

When I get stuck, I read.
So I read a lot.
Good books in my mind do one thing really well, they help adjust my thinking.

Three on my list

1. Design Thinking and Innovation is about testing early, learning as quick & cheaply as possible and the benefits of staying curious.

2. The Rules That Make Us is about about recognising early changes in behaviour and meaning, before they become obvious to everyone else. And benefitting from this insight.

3. Runnin’ Down a Dream about how compounding works both ways. So we all (including organisations) need to be more deliberate about where we place our time, energy and attention.

What’s on your bedside table at the moment?

#books #usingyournoggin #learning

A thought for a friday ....

'Moments of wild uncertainty are often hiding the seeds of transformation'
Zack Kass

It's true what Steve Jobs said, when he talked about only being able to join the dots backwards.

Happy Friday

Have you read Stripes' annual letter released today.?

always a fascinating read and three things I think worth re-iterating from it ...

1. the winners are compounding faster, the gap between the best and the good is widening.

2. compute is the real economy (like electricity or even the internet was)

3. the interface to commerce is changing FAST, agents, protocols, new rails and permissions & new gatekeepers

and just as most things underneath you are changing there is a suggestion that speed is becoming a survival trait

See letter below. I must admit I also love ALL their Stripe Press Books, well worth checking out also.

#speed #useyournoggin #stablecoins #powerofcompounding #stripe

stripe annual letter 2025

A Monday morning thought ...

...if more of us actually looked after our noggins, would the outcomes would be more noticeable everywhere?

(yes they would)

Better thinking.
Better decisions.
Better emotional control.
Better relationships.
Less burnout.
Less reactivity.

Our brains fuel everything we do.

When we fuel it properly, life tends to work better.

So today and every day, look after your noggin

so it can better look after you  🧠

ps it's Brain Awareness Week this week.

#brainawarenessweek #useyournoggin #oomph

Everyone’s an entrepreneur now.


A quick scroll of LinkedIn and it’s like ...
 
Founder ... of vibes probably

CEO ... of a side hustle that hasn’t started yet but they're raising ESIS

“Building in public” ... posting instead of building me thinks
 
And who could forget ....

... a course on how to do all of the above

It sometimes appears that we've created an ecosystem of people who haven’t built anything…teaching people how to build something…using frameworks from people who also haven’t built anything.

And now I get to use my Jay Z lyrics  ....

“Everybody can talk, but ask them what they’ve done.”

This line should be printed at the top of LinkedIn.

Because the truth is, building something is extremely squiggly ....
 
Most days “CEO energy" is replying to emails no one asked for or fixing a problem you caused yesterday and celebrating a £47 sale like you’ve just exited for £47 million 😛 

So here’s a thought before you follow the guru or buy the course…

Ask yourself .... What have they actually built?” .... like really built.

Not what they say. Not what they post. What they’ve actually done.

Because it seems that being an “entrepreneur” is easy these days.

But actually building something ..... that's still annoyingly hard.

And if you're in the messy bit, by the way… hats off to you. Keep going 👏 

ps love this from bomsthefirst over on IG. She knows it. Wild CEO energy 😛 

#entrepreneur #vinted #useyournoggin 
Dr. Clara Doran MBBS MRCGP Noggin The Brain People ❤️ 🧠 ❤️

"I'm constantly trying to rebuild and understand how I will get better and learn" (e.g. on sustainability)

Thirty minutes well spent this weekend listening to Mark Given's first ever podcast with Russell Parsons on Marketing Week.

Mark's career arc is fascinating. Civil engineering at Glasgow, P&G in 1998, Scottish & Newcastle/Heineken, O2, and now several years shaping the growth at Sainsbury's. But the key takeout for me isn't Mark's CV, it's his mindset behind it.

Three things to note:

🧠 His genuine hunger to keep developing, not just himself, but also his teams. ("careers are long").
 🧠 His humility to know he doesn't have all the answers ... yet. But works hard to invest in proper understanding.
🧠 And his obsession with the customer. Always asking "so what does this mean for them?" 

If you're looking for a self-development 30mins this week, this is it. Link in the comments.

You'll have been very happy with that 🏉 result yesterday Mark - AMAZING GAME

#selfdevelopment #useyournoggin #learning #humility

War is dominating our news & AI is dominating our conversations.

But strategic minerals will dominate the future.

Sad but crazy eh.

#strategicminerals #war #ai #tungsten #gallium

(image sourced from robert_ivanhoe on X)

“When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.”


Love this from the 16th century scholar Erasmus via Ryan Holiday.

What's on your shopping list?

#reading #useyournoggin #books

📚 Mick's Recommended Reading: What I underlined

"Rather than the usual narrative of disruption and job loss, Mick reflects on a more optimistic view: that AI could expand, not replace, what makes us human. The real shift isn’t just technological - it’s cultural. As machines take on more of the measurable work, skills like curiosity, judgment, creativity and leadership become even more valuable.
It’s a thought-provoking read that asks a bigger question: if everything could be automated, what would you choose to keep?"

Read Mick Doran's full blog post - link in the comments

#RenAIssance #AI #imagination

China’s latest 5 year plan has been discussed in the news this week.

While a lot of discussions in the West regarding China focuses on 'chips' there is seemingly few mentions of this in their plan.

There is, however, a lot of focus on artificial intelligence; compute power, digital infrastructure & applications.

There is a new phrase that appears in the plan for the first time & it means model : chip : cloud : application. We're told to think of it as a technology stack.

So chips are only one layer of four & above them sit the AI models, the cloud infrastructure, and the applications that can actually transform industries.

China’s strategy appears to be building the whole stack. It's not just about invention but deployment, embedding AI into factories, logistics, robotics & supply chains.

They are looking to apply intelligence across the entire economy & aligning universities, capital, infrastructure and industrial policy around strategic technologies.

Their new measure of success appears to be the digital economy reaching 12.5% of GDP by 2030.

Maybe the 'strategic' part of the story now is not who is building the best chips but who is building the most powerful computing ecosystem. (appreciate politics of this)

#ai #ecosystems #chips #china
image source visual capitalist

Iain Montgomery

Iain Montgomery is a provocateur, but more professionally known as a strategist and founder of Now or Never, a firm that helps companies dither less and do more. His work sits at the intersection of strategy, innovation and behavioral science, helping established institutions navigate change, not just incrementally, but with some audacity. 

He works with executive teams to reboot their innovation efforts, rethink their category and make sharper strategic bets because in an era of disruption, playing it safe is the riskiest thing you can do. This includes imagining new futures, designing new propositions and finding distinctive signature moves. 

Beyond the corporate world, Iain is also deeply immersed in urban innovation, specifically how cities and infrastructure can act with more of a Challenger mindset through his podcast and writing with Challenger Cities. He believes that whether it's a multinational firm or a municipal transit network, the biggest obstacle to change usually isn’t money or technology, but a mindset.

In short, he’s here to pick fights with mediocrity, whether it’s in corporate boardrooms, city halls or the way we think about the future.

Founder, consultant and the guy who sends the invoices. 

Last call for Challenger Cities live in Singapore at The Nanson. 

It’s what happens when the world’s most eclectic urbanism podcast gets a rather wonderful selection of people in a room together, who wouldn’t ordinarily end up in the same room together … but all hold an interest in place.

I love how each time I run one of these things, it seems to develop a slightly different form and theme. While Toronto and Montreal have been chats over craft beer, and London was a curry … Singapore is this amazing clubhouse space. 

Massive kudos to Anupam Yog for helping pull this together at short notice, as well as being a bit of an instigator for the theme. We’ve chatted a lot about what makes a “next city”. 

So I want to challenge the city that seems to hog the attention. Singapore is fawned over by urbanists. Not without reason. But it’s going to have to keep it up as the next great cities are likely places most are not really talking about. 

Rather excited to have Samantha Peart, Tulsi Grover, Paul Owens and Chevon Low to help us have a properly good and hopefully provocative conversation about it too. 

I reckon we can squeeze a couple more folks in. So if you’re a #singapore person, or want to tag one in, please do. And DM to ensure you’re on the guest list.

Making ‘more interestingly less wrong’ a legitimate business strategy.

"MacKinnon told the committee that the federal government “made it clear” in 2024 that Via Rail needed to strengthen staff training, address equipment failures and focus on passenger wellbeing."

I find VIA Rail Canada to be a fascinating organisation. Mostly because they operate from this position of a spectacularly low bar, and in full view that at some point, this thing from Alto will probably kill them. 

So it should be a spectacularly ripe place for innovation and experimentation. 

I've probably used VIA about 25 times. I can count the number of times the train has operated on schedule on one hand. By any rational reason or logic, I wouldn't use them. 

Which is bad, because I rather like trains!

If you're travelling at relatively short notice between Montreal and Toronto, the air fare is hovering around $1000. If you need a hotel stay, expect $400 / night. The drive is typically 6-7 hours with traffic. 

Last time I needed to do this journey, I drove, because the trains were cancelled due to snow getting into the locomotive. In Canada, that's more daft than the British excuse of leaves on the line. 

So you've got the two biggest cities in Canada and hence a big captive audience, with high prices for travel. That should be like seeing bags of money for an entrepreneur, and yet VIA operates with all the opportunism and commercial savvy of a Soviet apparatchik. 

Even with all the constraints of the infrastructure owner mostly being the freight operator, one should be able to deliver something better than what's being served up just now. 

So it's good to see Steven MacKinnon, the Transport Minister, putting a little more pressure on VIA to up its game.

Open article: Via Rail ‘must improve’ customer service, reliability, transport minister says by ctvnews.ca

A VIA Rail passenger train arrives at the Fallowfield Station in Ottawa on January 26, 2026. (CTV News Ottawa)

Via Rail ‘must improve’ customer service, reliability, transport minister says

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The Battle

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Iain Montgomery

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The Battle

Mick Doran

Iain Montgomery

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Engagements

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Mick Doran's LinkedIn Performance

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