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The Strategic Innovation group is a recently established directorate, and, as the name suggests it performs a variety of interesting work.

It’s made up of the Business Development and Business Intelligence team, the Community and Customer Innovation team, the International Development team, the eScience team and the Solutions team. Over the last four months I have been based within the Business Development team, and as well as getting to know this team, I have had the opportunity to work with colleagues from across the department. For more information about the team - take a look at this blog.

Half of my role has involved using skills developed during my Communications placement, and the other half has taught me new skills. Business Development related tasks have included researching aspects of our competitors, user testing for our new platforms, and I have also been fortunate enough to be part of the project teams of two of the most interesting and exciting projects – the digital regeneration of our web presence (www.rsc.org) – where the aim is to launch a user-friendly web presence that looks great and is easy to use - and the launch of our new Chemical Sciences Article Repository, which is the subject specific repository that allows authors, publishers and institutions to deposit Open Access papers.

In September, I was also fortunate enough to help at a workshop held at Burlington House called ‘Open Innovation and Neglected Diseases’, where as well as learning a great deal about the topic, I also learnt how events like that were organised, and I met some really interesting people.
 
Using my communications skills, I have helped raise awareness of a new Royal Society of Chemistry initiative called the Global Chemistry Network. As part of a project team we organised two internal staff ‘open days’ where we showcased the work that was happening as part of the Global Chemistry Network project – such as the launch of the new Chemical Sciences Article Repository, the Royal Society of Chemistry Account and Profile and the work we are doing to ‘Digitally Enhance the RSC Archive’. (We also provided ‘innovative’ cakes for attendees – delicious cakes that were made up of an unusual combination of flavours.)

As a result of sitting next to Oscar Gillespie, a Multimedia Innovation Specialist, whose work predominantly involves designing interactive and educational chemistry games, I have helped him with the Molecular Treasure Hunt game – a pirate based game where you have to cure sick pirates using specific molecules.

I have really enjoyed my time so far within the Strategic Innovation group, as it has been really interesting being involved with the initial ideas that lead to us launching new products, services and technologies for the benefit of our community.