Matthew Riches | Stalled Innovation Consultancy
Consultancy for organisations whose innovation teams, pipelines and programmes have stalled, slowed down or stopped producing credible results.
I help organisations find out why innovation has stalled
and rebuild slow, unclear or underperforming pipelines around credible product progress.
Stalled innovation diagnosis • product strategy • executive alignment
research grounding • prototype direction • leadership recovery
Selected product work and shipped technology experience.
Innovation rarely stalls for one clean reason. It slows when strategy, people, research, funding, decisions and product evidence stop supporting the same outcome.
A team can be busy and still learn very little. A pipeline can be full and still go nowhere. Leadership can support the work in public while privately losing confidence in it. Sometimes the cause is funding. Sometimes it is external pressure, weak direction, poor communication, low trust, underperforming people, unclear ownership or management that rewards activity instead of progress.
My work identifies the blockage, makes the pattern visible and helps the organisation decide what to stop, fix, focus or fund next.
When a sector-specific voice is needed, I can bring in trusted freelance specialists across video games, automotive, health, sustainability, consumer technology, education, finance and everything inbetween. The engagement stays focused. The room gains the right expertise.
Free Innovation Friction Assessment
A starting point for teams that know the pipeline is not working
The free assessment helps identify the likely source of friction inside your innovation pipeline. It is designed for founders, executives, product leaders, design leaders and innovation teams who can feel progress slowing, but need clearer language for the cause.
It looks at the areas that most often break innovation momentum: strategic direction, customer grounding, evidence quality, stakeholder alignment, decision ownership, team capability, funding confidence, prototype maturity, leadership trust and the route into the core business.
You receive a clearer starting diagnosis: where the pipeline appears blocked, what kind of intervention may be needed and if a deeper diagnostic would be useful.
Consultancy Services
Innovation Blockage Diagnostic
Find the real cause of weak innovation results
A focused diagnostic for organisations whose innovation pipeline has slowed, become confused or started producing weak outcomes.
The work examines where momentum is being lost: unclear strategy, weak customer evidence, fragile business cases, poor research grounding, competing stakeholder agendas, underpowered teams, decision paralysis, weak management, low trust, funding uncertainty or pressure from the wider business.
You receive a clear assessment of what is blocking progress, which initiatives deserve attention, which should be stopped or reframed and what needs to change over the next 90 days.
Innovation Recovery Programme
Restore visible product momentum
A hands-on engagement for teams that need to regain direction, confidence and output after stalled or low-quality innovation.
This may involve reshaping the opportunity, rebuilding the product thesis, grounding the work in better research, creating prototypes, clarifying decision gates, improving communication between teams and executives, or helping leaders decide where resources should go.
The goal is not more innovation theatre. The goal is evidence, focus and a credible product decision.
Embedded Innovation Leadership
Senior direction for stalled or exposed innovation teams
Ongoing senior support for organisations that need experienced innovation, product and design leadership without making a permanent hire.
This is useful when the team is capable but lacks a clear operating rhythm. It also helps when promising people need stronger direction, stakeholders have lost confidence or leadership needs an external voice able to challenge assumptions and restore focus.
Support can include product critique, team rituals, executive alignment, roadmap input, hiring support, mentoring, portfolio reviews, decision frameworks and carefully selected specialist input where the sector needs it.
How engagements work
Diagnosis before intervention
Map the visible symptoms
I start with what the organisation can already see: slow delivery, weak concepts, poor decisions, low-quality outputs, confused priorities, loss of trust, funding anxiety or a pipeline that looks full and produces little of value.
Find the underlying blockage
The visible problem is rarely the real problem. I look at strategy, evidence, incentives, communication, leadership, team capability, technical grounding and the route into the core business to find where momentum is being lost.
Create a recovery path
You receive a practical recovery path: what to stop, what to fix, what to focus, who needs to be aligned, which evidence is missing and what must happen next for the pipeline to produce credible results again.
Relevant Experience
Huawei R&D Innovation Lab
AI · HMI · Robotics · Future Interfaces
I built and led a London innovation laboratory focused on future consumer technology, intelligent systems and human-machine interaction.
Apple Innovation Incubation
AI/ML · Future Products · Prototyping
I worked inside an innovation incubation team exploring future product ideas, prototyping with AI/ML engineers and world-class designers.
Apple Silicon MacBook Pro
Product Direction · Industrial Design
I was a leading figure in the new MacBook direction with Apple Silicon, helping move the product back towards capability, ports, thermals and professional trust.
Safety, Health & Accessibility
Trust · Inclusion · High-Stakes UX
I designed and influenced product experiences where clarity, trust, accessibility and real-world consequences mattered deeply.
Typical client situations
The pipeline is full, but little ships
There are many ideas, pilots, concepts or experiments. Too few become funded, integrated, launched or trusted by the wider organisation.
Innovation is busy but unfocused
The team is active and capable. The work lacks a clear product thesis, customer grounding, commercial logic or decision framework.
Leadership has lost confidence
Executives still believe innovation matters. They no longer trust the pipeline to produce meaningful progress or justify continued investment.
The team has a people or management problem
The blockage may come through unclear ownership, weak leadership, low trust, poor communication, underperformance, misaligned incentives or teams working against each other without meaning to.
What people say
Via LinkedIn ↗Matthew sets the standard for what an innovation leader should be. With his extensive big-tech background and having founded several successful startups, Matthew pairs an incredible instinct for industry trends with the rare ability to clearly articulate a vision to both stakeholders and team members.
Gonzalo Morales
Huawei
June 2026
Matthew has a remarkable ability to identify emerging trends in AI software, hardware, and human–machine interaction, and consistently brings forward-looking insights that inspire the entire team.
Weidi Zheng
Huawei
June 2026
Matthew is an amazing designer, always bringing new concepts and ideas, always challenging the status quo and approaching things from new perspectives. He can also code and has built amazing prototypes harnessing the power of generative AI.
Guillaume Privat
Apple
October 2024
Matthew possesses a remarkable ability to transform complex ideas into user-friendly and visually stunning designs. On top of that, he has the ability to take his own designs into working prototypes thanks to his software development skills.
Marco Dinacci
Apple
September 2023
Consultancy enquiries
Let’s find out where your innovation pipeline is stuck
Best suited to organisations with innovation teams, labs, pipelines or future-product programmes that have slowed down, lost focus or started producing weak results.
Matthew Riches, Innovation Pipeline Consultant, London, United Kingdom.