JR
Joaquín Romero Roldán, independent board advisor

Joaquín Romero Roldán — Innovation, Strategy and Leadership

In a time of Artificial Intelligence and complexity, what decides the game is competing on value, and that comes from knowing how to connect Collective Intelligence

Joaquín Romero Roldán

Independent Board Advisor

InnovationStrategyLeadershipBoard

Three decades in four stages

BA in Business Administration and Management (UPNA)Executive Program in Innovation and Entrepreneurship (MIT)Member of the Instituto de Consejeros-Administradores (IC-A)

Services

Let's start with what is actually happening to you

I work with universities, research centres, industry, public administration and the non-profit sector to turn complex problems into decisions that hold.

Try:

Ten services, grouped into four families.

Innovation

Innovation Reactor and knowledge transfer

For Universities, research centres, industry and the non-profit sector

  • The problem and the hunches: going out to be told you are wrong
  • Parts and scale: bringing the problem down until it fits the resources you already have
  • The opportunity space and managing risk
  • Final report and scaling logic, to decide whether to continue, change tack or stop

Four modules over four to six months, teams of three to five people from different disciplines, and an assessment at the end of every module.

You don't start with an idea, you start with a hunch: an engine for turning knowledge into valueOpen the Reactor

Service Redesign Lab

For Public administration, universities, alliances and institutional networks, and the non-profit sector

  • Kick-off with the leadership team: purpose, beneficiary and definition of success
  • Service maturity radar, anonymous and aggregated
  • Listening to the people who use it: full journey and pain points
  • Future scenarios and user-centred design
  • Service prototype and six-month roadmap

I work with leadership teams, service managers and real users of the service, without interrupting day-to-day operations.

Eight weeks, five sessions and more than twenty different people contributing to the design. Four capabilities stay in the organisation.See the method

Strategy

Strategy Contrast: a light process for firm decisions

For Industry and corporations, universities and R&D centres that write strategic plans, and public administration

  • Review of the strategy, declared or not, with leadership teams
  • Foresight work
  • Positioning workshops with leadership teams and senior stakeholders
  • Design of the agile deployment with leadership teams

A handful of full days with the whole leadership team. Between one and the next there is no steering committee and no homework for the leadership team.

Three sources that cross, four future scenarios and a watch board with a name and a date on every line.See the method

Executive Agenda and traction-led deployment of the strategy

For Industry and corporations, large universities and R&D centres, public administration, and organisations that have already run a contrast

  • Turning priorities into projects that pull
  • An annual calendar of decisions, anchored to the windows that actually exist
  • Redesign of the committee's agenda
  • Activation of the watch board, with an owner and a date

Sessions with leadership teams and middle managers across a year.

A year of support, with bounded sessions and a withdrawal date agreed from the start. I don't do the follow-up: the organisation does.See the method

Embedding user-centred strategy

For Public administration, universities, alliances and institutional networks, and the non-profit sector

  • An upfront measurement of whether the institution is ready, with a recommendation that may be negative
  • The foundations that hold up any improvement in the value of services
  • Three functions run by the core team: co-creation, prototyping and training
  • A core team of five people and the rule of three owners per project
  • Annual programme: challenges, sprints, problem clinic and showcase day

Four phases over twenty-four months, with a decision at the end of each on whether to continue, adjust or stop.

Redesigning one service is a project; being able to redesign all of them is a capability. The upfront measurement may well conclude that your institution needs to unblock its administrative pipeline first.See the method

In preparation · launch expected in October 2026

AI Strategy

For Organisations of every kind

  • Data governance (with specialist partners)
  • Tool catalogue (with specialist partners)
  • Choosing the priority tools (with specialist partners)

I work with leadership and technology teams to move from an inventory of available tools to a decision on which ones are the priority because they add the most value.

I am building this service with a specialist partner, to launch it with something that genuinely adds value and not before. If your organisation has this decision on the table now, there is no need to wait until October.Write to me and let's talk sooner

Leadership

Leadership Model

For Industry and corporations, universities and R&D centres, and public administration

  • Measurement of the organisation's culture
  • What leading means here, written down and signed by the leadership team
  • Who gets called a leader, and at which levels
  • Selection of the key functions from twelve responsibilities and eighteen competencies
  • Assessment of current leadership, measuring development and importance separately
  • A contrast session with the whole group and a set of agreed proposals
  • Deployment plan and design of the training programme

Three in-person sessions and an online assessment system. The contrast session works with the entire group, up to a hundred leaders at once.

A leadership model cannot be bought ready-made: it is written with the people who will have to exercise it. Out of it come a deployment plan, a training programme and, where necessary, a redefinition of structures.See the method

Learning for Leadership

For Industry and corporations, universities and R&D centres, and public administration

  • Translating the strategic plan into a learning agenda for the people who lead
  • In-house training designed around the organisation's real use cases
  • A programme of your own for those leading today and those who will lead next
  • The written list of what will not be learned this year
  • Modules with a deliverable, teaching staff chosen one by one, and programme coordination
  • Change and innovation management as use cases, not as subjects

Designed with the leadership team and delivered with the whole group that leads. People learn while they work: the organisation doesn't stop.

Training can be bought outside, but learning is built inside. The agenda doesn't come from a course catalogue; it comes from what the organisation will have to know how to do in two years and cannot do today.See the method

Deploying the leadership plan

For Universities, public health organisations, large organisations and public administration

  • An executable action plan: an owner, a cost and a date for every action
  • Talent development plan: profiles, onboarding, performance, career and succession
  • Re-engineering of processes and structures, before hiring anyone
  • Analysis and transformation of the job-classification framework (RPT), in public administration

The phase that follows the leadership model: turning the plan it produces into decisions actually taken. I direct the work; the organisation writes and signs the plans.

Only the actions the model identified get deployed. If your leadership model has not been defined and assessed yet, there is nothing to deploy and the conversation starts earlier.See the method

Board

Independent board member

For Boards of directors, advisory boards and governing bodies. Member of the Instituto de Consejeros-Administradores (IC-A), the Spanish institute of directors

  • Strategy and value creation. Independent judgement in the board's strategic decisions, focused on long-term value creation.
  • Oversight and control. Risk and compliance, making sure management stays within the strategy approved by the governing body.
  • Committees and governance. Membership of key committees (Innovation, Sustainability) and sound corporate governance.

Get in touch to hear about the Advisory Boards of Navarre initiative.

Collective intelligence at scale. Much of this work is delivered in hybrid, in-person or online sessions, with groups of up to a hundred people.

Network

Who comes with me and, perhaps, with you

I don't work alone. Depending on what the assignment demands, I bring in specialists I have worked with for years, each on what they do better than I do.

Each collaboration is agreed assignment by assignment.

Ideas

Ideas, press and case studies

My own articles, cases from real work and press appearances on innovation, strategy, leadership and advisory boards. I write to defend an idea, not to fill space.

    I also publish on LinkedIn →