Julian Waters-Lynch

Julian is Neu21’s Work Futurist. His work explores the economic and social effects of emerging technology, and how these changes impact entrepreneurship, organisational design and the changing character of work. His PhD examined these questions through an ethnography of the pioneering Coworking communities in Melbourne.

Julian is also a Strategic Designer, specialising in user experience research, innovation project management and organisational design. He leads projects and teams that solve complex problems spanning product, service and organisational design challenges. As a consultant, he has worked with corporates, governments, non-profits and startups, with clients such as Telstra, NAB, ANZ, PwC, Australia Unity, RMIT University, University of Melbourne, Australian Red Cross, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Employment, City of Melbourne, General Assembly, Culture Amp, Hub Australia and Startup Victoria. He has also co-founded two enterprises, The Facilitation Starter, specialising in workshop facilitation, design thinking and codesign methodologies and TypeHuman, specialising in the application of blockchains and emerging Web3 technology.

As well as exploring the future of work with Neu21 colleagues and our clients, Julian is also currently director of the entrepreneurship program and a lecturer in entrepreneurship, innovation and organisational design in the School of Management at RMIT University. His research projects are connected to the Blockchain Innovation Hub, Digital Ethnography Research Centre, the Fight Food Waste CRC and the Centre for Urban Research at RMIT.

Over the past 15 years, he has also found himself getting paid to play jazz piano, translate Spanish, teach classes in primary, secondary and tertiary education institutions, mentor social entrepreneurs, run a startup accelerator, make coffee, design leadership programs, and host talks on work futures (not in that order).

Julian lives on the Bellarine Peninsular with his partner, their daughter and Labrador and still occasionally gets time to play piano. Head on over to our blog page, to read some of Julian’s latest thinking.