Our Team

Informed inspiration means having:

Informers – a team of MBAs and market insight specialists

Inspirers – a team of designers trained in brand communication, product and packaging

Many firms are design firms with a few researchers, or research firms with a few designers. We have built a business with a balance of staff in each area to ensure we maintain the balance, tensions, and inspiration that create breakthrough results for you.

With a world-class team of strategists, trend analysts, researchers and designers we partner our clients to deliver breakthrough outcomes through collaboration, co-innovation and disruptive thinking.

We have a wealth of experience and a successful track record in building and aligning corporate visions and structures, as well as creating successful brands, services, products and packs.

Our innovative team combines fresh thinking and sound commercial knowledge with global experience.

Latest News

• New Antennae issue: No57 Impulse Buying available here...

• NewEdge presenting at 2011 IRI Member Summit

• NewEdge brings fresh thinking to the 2011 DI Innovate Conference.

• NewEdge designs drinks bottle for McLaren F1 team

• 

  NewEdge partner with finalist of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair

Paul Stead, MA

Paul Stead received an MA in furniture design in 1981, after a First Class BA (Hons) in Design from Loughborough University. He began his design career with Fitch & Co, and in 1984 at the age of 26 he was made the youngest Associate Director in the company’s history. 

In 1988 Paul left Fitch & Co to form his own consultancy, PSD Associates, which went on to become a leading multidisciplinary consultancy employing over 85 staff and generating a turnover of circa $16M. PSD served clients such as Coca-Cola, Unilever, Motorola, Nokia, BT, and Lucent.

In June of 2000, Paul sold PSD to Cordiant Communications Group (CCG) and shortly thereafter, was appointed CEO of Fitch Worldwide with a seat on the CCG Management Board. At Fitch Worldwide, Paul was responsible for the 25 global offices, 750 staff and a combined P+L of circa $100M. At that time Fitch Worldwide was the world’s largest design consultancy, having JV partnerships with Coca-Cola, Allied Domecq, GE and BAT. In 2003, CCG including Fitch Worldwide was sold to WPP.

In 2004 Paul founded The Brewery in order to continue his passion for the creative and commercial application of design. The CEO of, one of the Brewery's clients, Eastman Chemical suggested he should meet Pam Henderson, CEO of NewEdge, with a view of exchanging views and possibly collaborating. The meeting in Seattle in 2005 was a seminal meeting of minds where both parties realized the power of putting Research + Strategy + Design together in one business offer. From their initial client work with Motorola and Microsoft the current business vision was born.

Paul continues to have a “hands on role” with clients and is currently acting as part-time Chief Marketing / Innovation Officer for Standard Textile – a privately owned global textile business.

Pam Henderson, Ph.D

Pam Henderson received a Ph.D in market strategy at the University of Texas at Austin in 1989. She began her academic career taking a faculty position at Carnegie Mellon. Her research focused on empirically demonstrating and predicting the impact of design on consumer response.

Throughout Pam’s career her research has received recognition in leading publications including the Harvard Business Review and the Wall Street Journal, as well as in interviews across an array of media engagements. She is also a regular speaker at international innovation conferences as well as at Fortune 500 innovation events.

In helping the US National Laboratory to identify products and markets for early stage technology platforms in 1995, Pam developed Disruptive Market Research™. Over hundreds of projects, the technique proved strong at identifying, prioritizing, and sizing markets that were in their infancy or had yet to emerge, including the need for anthrax sensing equipment in the mid 1990s.

Working as a consultant for many years Pam established NewEdge as an innovation and business strategy consultancy with an emphasis in market insight and strategic planning. Under Pam’s guidance NewEdge has grown into an internationally recognized consultancy working to improve corporate strategies and structures in some of the world’s biggest organizations.