Who we are
Locus Design + Innovation is an Anglo-Greek design strategy consultancy co-founded by Dr Manos Chatzakis and Neil Smith in 2019. With over a decade of professional collaboration, we have worked with and supported a wide range of organisations — from NGOs, SMEs, and start-ups to very large multinational corporations.
The practice brings strong experience in multidisciplinary innovation thinking, creative tools for visualising business and organisational strategy — including workshops, creative sprints, team building, creative mapping and analysis, framing and engagement — as well as hands-on design practice. Our work is grounded in academic research, peer-reviewed publications, and direct engagement with businesses of every scale.
Co-founder & Director (Greece)
Born and raised in Chania, professionally grown in the UK. Manos is a product designer, design strategist, and researcher with a PhD in design-led innovation from Northumbria University (BA, MA, PhD Design). His doctoral research investigated how small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises maintain relevance to their markets through obscure innovation practices — the not-well-articulated activities embedded in day-to-day business that drive agility and competitive advantage. This research, together with six peer-reviewed publications spanning 2015 to 2019, forms the intellectual foundation of the Locus practice.
Manos brings clarity to complex problem spaces through problem-framing, pattern recognition, and visual mapping. His expertise lies in strategic design, design-led innovation, co-creation, and the development of novel design methods and tools for visualising and explicating complexity — including Pytheas, a proprietary process-mapping tool developed during his PhD. He also delivers tangible design outputs: products, graphics, identities, proposals, and communications. He is particularly driven by using design-led approaches to transform and shape better practices, enable innovation, and build resilience — while crafting inspiring insights and persuasive stories.
Co-founder & Director (UK)
Product designer and design-led innovation practitioner with over 40 years of professional experience across industry and academia. Neil served as Enterprise Fellow and Head of Industrial Design at Northumbria University, where he led collaborative design-led partnerships with over 100 organisations — from SMEs to multinationals including Unilever, Mars, Nike, Intel, Herman Miller, and GSK. As an award-winning Knowledge Transfer Partnership supervisor, he established KTPs worth over £480,000, embedding innovation capability directly into partner businesses.
Neil’s expertise lies in deploying design thinking and creative narrative tools into complex, multidisciplinary problem spaces — from offshore deep-sea exploration and surgical procedures to FMCG product development and social innovation in dementia care. He has co-authored five international patents through KTP collaborations and holds a sustained track record in practice-based research, peer-reviewed publications, and doctoral supervision. His particular strength is the ability to rapidly see and ideate around complex patterns and behaviours — connecting disparate perspectives to create new paradigms for innovation.
Extended network
Locus works with a curated network of specialist collaborators — researchers, facilitators, designers, and sector experts — assembled to match the specific needs of each engagement. We scale the team to the challenge, not the other way around.
Research & publications
Locus methodology is grounded in a body of peer-reviewed academic research spanning 2010 to 2019 — covering design-led innovation, co-creation, value framing, and the surfacing of obscure innovation practices in organisations.
Doctoral thesis
Chatzakis, E. (2015). Maintaining Agility: A study of obscure New Product Development practices in small and medium sized manufacturing enterprises to understand how they maintain relevance to their markets. PhD thesis, Northumbria University.
Journal articles
Bailey, M., Chatzakis, E., Spencer, N. (2019). A design-led approach to transforming wicked problems into design situations and opportunities. Journal of Design Business & Society, 5(1), 95–127.
Bailey, M., Spencer, N., Smith, N., Aftab, M., Knott, C. & Sams, P. (2018). Framing Strategic Value through Design-led Innovation Practice. Project Design Management, 16(82), 54–63.
Spencer, N., Bailey, M., Smith, N. (2018). Delivering Organisational Creative Functionality through Design-led Innovation Practice. International Journal of Design.
Bailey, M., Smith, N., Spencer, N., Aftab, M., Davidson, J., Stalker, B. & Sams, P. (2018). Education for three value frames of design-led Innovation Practice. The International Journal of Design Education.
Qin, S., Van der Velde, D., Chatzakis, E., McStea, T. & Smith, N. (2016). Exploring barriers and opportunities in adopting crowdsourcing based new product development in manufacturing SMEs. Chinese Journal of Mechanical Engineering, 29(6).
Bailey, M. & Smith, N. (2013). Connecting for Impact — Multidisciplinary Approaches to Innovation in SMEs. FormAkademisk, 5(2), 1863–1876.
Conference papers & book chapters
Sterling, N., Bailey, M., Spencer, N., Lampitt Adey, K., Chatzakis, E. (2018). From conflict to catalyst: using critical conflict as a creative device in design-led innovation practice. Academic Design Management Conference ADMC18: Next Wave, London.
Bailey, M., Spencer, N., Chatzakis, E., Lampitt Adey, K., Sterling, N. & Smith, N. (2018). From wicked problem to design problem: Developing actionable briefs and solution opportunities through a collaborative, multidisciplinary design-led approach. DRS 2018, Limerick, 831–851.
Bailey, M., Spencer, N., Smith, N., Knott, C., Aftab, M. & Sams, P. (2018). Framing Strategic Value through Design-led Innovation Practice. DESIGN 2018, 15th International Design Conference, Glasgow, 1781–1792.
Inoue, S. & Smith, N. (2018). Reductive is Augmentative: How Reduced Information Enhances a Designer’s Imagination. Advances in Psychology Research, 133. Nova Science Publishers, 1–63.
Spencer, N., Bailey, M., Smith, N., Davidson, J. & Sams, P. (2017). What on Earth is Responsible Innovation Anyway? — and how to teach it. E&PDE17, 19th International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education, Strathclyde, 38–43.
Smith, N., Inoue, S., Spencer, N. & Tennant, A. (2016). Creative puzzlement: how deconstructing elements of object facilitates industrial design student’s imagination. EDA12, Design for Next 2017, Rome.
Chatzakis, E., Smith, N. & Bohemia, E. (2016). A Multilevel Approach to Research ‘Obscure’ Innovation Processes and Practices. 50th Anniversary DRS Conference, Brighton.
Bailey, M. & Smith, N. (2016). Making it Work: Integrated Academic Practice. 20th DMI Academic Design Management Conference: Inflection Point, Boston, 2346–2363.
Aftab, M., Spencer, N., Bailey, M., Jeffs, C., Smith, N., Stalker, B. & Sams, P. (2015). A multidisciplinary approach to innovation. The Innovation & Entrepreneurship Teaching Excellence Awards 2015, Academic Conferences and Publishing International, 1–14.
Bailey, M., Aftab, M. & Smith, N. (2015). Hidden Value — Towards an Understanding of the Full Value and Impact of Engaging Students in User-Led Research and Innovation Projects. 3rd International Conference for Design Education Researchers, Aalto, 290–307.
Bailey, M. & Smith, N. (2010). Safe Environments for Innovation — Developing a New Multidisciplinary Masters Programme. E&PDE 2010, 12th International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education, Strathclyde, 60–65.
Next step
The Clarity Session is a structured 120-minute strategic conversation. We map your situation, surface the real challenge, and identify the right next move.
