Catherine Johns
Catherine Johns Director Catherine is Director of Innovation Development at County Durham Development Company which develops, manages and promotes the North East Technology Park (NETPark) in County Durham on behalf of Durham County Council.Having spent many years in retail and business development, her first introduction to economic regeneration projects was working at BALTIC, the Centre for Contemporary Art, in Gateshead, and then the Biscuit Factory, one of the largest commercial art spaces in Europe. From 2003-05 she was Project Manager for Knowledge Futures, a public/private sector provider of global services which unlocked innovation for companies developing new products. Responsibilities included supervision of the Design Team for the Knowledge Futures hub building; designing a 'stage-gate' process to evaluate business investment readiness; creation, implementation and monitoring of processes for Knowledge Roundtable, a global service that provided intelligence and insights for senior product development practitioners; and creating Knowledge Communities, a new service for SMEs and 'lone inventors'. Catherine has been with CDDC since 2005 and was promoted to Director of Innovation Development in 2008. Her primary responsibility is to drive the development of NETPark. including strategic planning, improving business processes, marketing and communications, developing new business, managing revenue and capital finance, design and development of new builds and the extension of science park benefits to the wider business community through NETPark Net and Project C, the NETPark outreach programme. Catherine also sits on the North East Committee for the Institute of Physics. |