Dr Angela MacOscar, Head of Innovation at Northumbrian Water, on what it really means to lead boldly, why innovation is a contact sport, and how a five-day design sprint sparked a billion-pound impact.

Dr Angela MacOscar has a PhD in physical chemistry, a self-described "wiggly" career path, and a conviction that regenerative leadership can change everything. As Head of Innovation at Northumbrian Water, she has spent years creating the conditions for bold ideas to take root and in this episode of Meaningful Conversations, she drew the Bold card and used it to open a conversation about what boldness actually requires.

The answer, it turns out, is not noise. It is roots.

"You would never plant just one plant. You want variety. Strong roots - purpose, clarity, intention - are what allow bold ideas to withstand the storms."

Regeneration as a way of thinking

When the Bold card's image of a plant resonated with Angela, it was no coincidence. Northumbrian Water had just held its ninth Innovation Festival, themed around regeneration and for Angela, that word reaches far beyond its environmental meaning.

Regeneration, in her framing, means strengthening foundations. It means bringing diverse voices into a sector that has long been too narrow. It means sowing seeds today that will bear fruit for generations, accepting that the person who plants the seed may never sit in the shade of the tree. We are already living with the consequences of decisions made decades ago. The question the water industry now faces is a simple but weighty one: what are we planting for the future?

What nine Innovation Festivals have built

The Northumbrian Water Innovation Festival began as a bold experiment. In its first year, it brought 900 people to Newcastle to participate in six design sprints, each with the same brief: move from a challenge to a tested minimum viable product in five days. One of those early sprints gave birth to what is now the National Underground Asset Register - a UK government-run platform with over 300 users sharing real-time data on underground infrastructure. When someone digs up a road, they now know what they might hit. The safety, efficiency, and customer benefits run to an estimated billion pounds of impact, from one five-day sprint.

The formula is deliberate. Music, poetry, and comedy are woven into the programme, not as decoration, but as mechanism. Joy dislodges ideas. When people feel genuinely safe and energised, collaboration happens in ways that a traditional boardroom simply cannot produce. The model has since been adopted by Sydney Water and utilities in Iceland and Portugal, among others.

"Innovation is not something you do to people. It's a contact sport. You do it with them."

Building a culture where everyone can innovate

When Angela joined Northumbrian Water, she identified two groups without whom nothing would scale: senior leaders who could sponsor and believe in the work, and the people on the front line who understand most acutely what needs to change. Getting both groups genuinely involved - not just consulted - was the foundation.

Today, innovation is a measurable strategic pillar at Northumbrian Water, with a target of 40% of employees actively involved. With a team of nine, Angela knew that her function couldn't innovate on behalf of the whole business. So instead, they created a network of over 200 Innovation Ambassadors - people embedded across the organisation who receive training, seed funding, and the space to test ideas.

The inspiration is partly Derek Sivers' TED Talk on how movements start and the insight that the first follower matters as much as the bold first mover. Permission to innovate is now something everyone at Northumbrian Water holds. The goal, as Angela puts it, is to get everyone dancing in the field.

What regenerative water stewardship actually looks like

For Angela, leaving things better than we found them is the core commitment and in the water sector, that translates into a set of concrete, interconnected priorities.

• Energy reduction: Treating and moving water with less energy input across operations
• Less chemical dependency: Shifting away from chemical-intensive treatment wherever possible
• Nature alongside infrastructure: Harnessing natural systems rather than always defaulting to engineered ones
• A representative workforce: Building teams that reflect the communities the industry exists to serve

But regeneration, in Angela's view, cannot stop at the environment or the technology. It has to extend to people. Happy, supported people perform better - that is not a soft claim, it is a practical one. Compassion fuels performance. Empathy builds the trust that innovation depends on.

Angela has worked a four-day week for most of her career, champions no-meeting days, and actively uses AI to remove repetitive work so that people have genuine space to think. She notes that some of her best ideas arrive while running - when the mind has room to idle and wander, rather than being driven from task to task. Innovation, she is clear, requires breathing space.

"If we want regenerative systems, we need regenerative leadership. That starts with how we treat the people doing the work."

Boldness with roots

What makes Angela's perspective distinctive is that she holds boldness and patience in the same hand. The bold act is not the dramatic gesture or the disruptive announcement - it is the patient, intentional cultivation of the right conditions. It is designing cultures where people feel safe enough to experiment. It is tending to ideas long after the festival tents come down. It is remembering that transformation compounds over time, if the roots are strong enough to hold.

For anyone working in water, utilities, or any sector trying to navigate complexity, that is both a practical model and an invitation - to lead not just with ambition, but with the depth and care that ambition requires to actually take hold.

The water sector needs both boldness and regeneration and Angela MacOscar is demonstrating, at scale, that they are not in tension. Plant the right seeds. Build the roots. Create the conditions. Then watch what grows.