Empowering Sustainability: A Journey into Roadmapping and Strategic Consultancy with Diana Khripko

Diana Khripko is a Senior Solution Development Specialist at IfM Engage, University of Cambridge. She works with industry and local authorities on innovation in sustainability and digitalisation. She is also one of our tutors for Product-Technology Roadmapping, an 8-week online course from the University of Cambridge.

To mark International Women’s day 2022, Diana Khripko talks about some of her work and how she got into the field.

1. How long have you been working with roadmapping and strategic tools? Since I joined IfM Engage in 2018, the emphasis of my work has been on addressing strategic issues and helping public and private organisations to become more sustainable and efficient. This always requires the use of strategic planning tools such as roadmapping.

2. How did you get into roadmapping and strategic consultancy? I studied industrial engineering and completed a PhD in mechanical engineering. My research was focused on decarbonising industrial energy systems. While I conducted applied research in real factories by collecting data and supporting the implementation of improvement measures on shopfloors, I realised that to create a substantial impact a change at the strategic and cultural level of an organisation is needed – with sustainability becoming a core strategic element. Thus, I decided to move to strategic consultancy in order to learn how to develop strategies and help organisations to improve by creating a stronger linkage between their strategy and the available technological solutions and innovations. I joined IfM Engage because I believe that cross-fertilisation between academia and industry is the most promising way to make a difference.

3. Tell us about an interesting project you have worked on (one you are most proud of perhaps?) The most interesting project to me so far has been the work we completed with Henri Royce Institute. We brought together the academia and industry of an entire sector in order to align strategy regarding the materials for energy transition with the aim of informing the UK’s future policy focus. I led the work stream on photovoltaics. I learned a lot about breakthrough materials and potential applications for PV and also about the challenges from an industrial and consumer point of few that needed to be addressed in order for them to scale up. Please see:

https://www.royce.ac.uk/materials-for-the-energy-transition/(Opens in a new window)

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