Laurence Marzell

Laurence Marzell leads Whole System Approach, an operationally focussed research and innovation practice he founded in 2022. Drawing upon his practical experience of leading research and innovation projects for Serco’s UK & Europe division over the last decade, he has deep experience of the practical translation and exploitation of research and innovation outputs into day to day operational needs on the ground.

At Serco, Laurence led the participation in a number of EU Horizon 2020 projects in: Community policing; virtual and augmented reality training of crisis and first responders; the governance, integration and application of Earth Observation data with the wider information and intelligence mix; and resource and energy efficient renovation under the EU’s Green Deal. Together with the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), Laurence developed the white paper: Combined Effect: A New Approach to Resilience, in which development of the Combined Effect of the Collective Effort, now provides the basis for Whole System Approach. Here, Laurence incorporates the Combined Effect governance and decision making methodology to underpin the research and innovation projects and organisational transformation programmes in which he participates. He currently leads on behalf of Serco Belgium, one of the EU’s flagship research and innovation projects under the Green Deal Probono Green Neighbourhood | Probono (probonoh2020.eu)

He has a particular interest in aligning governance and operational delivery at the intersection and boundaries between organisations, whether public, private, voluntary and community, focussing on how these organisations need to come together to better understand, manage and meet their shared needs and outcomes.  At Serco, Laurence set up and jointly managed alongside the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CNPI), a cross-government CONTEST funded programme to look at the dependencies and interdependencies of Critical National Infrastructure (CNI). Laurence speaks regularly at conferences and events and is a contributor into specialist and subject matter journals and books.

He sits on the Crisis Response Journal Editorial Board Crisis Response Journal | Global information resource for all aspects of human-induced disasters or natural hazards, spanning response, disaster risk reduction, resilience, business continuity and security. (crisis-response.com); He was recently appointed Honorary Research Fellow at Imperial College, London Institute of Security Science Technology is a Founding Member of the Human Continuity Project and is a senior advisor to Astra-Terra, a specialist space and Earth Observation SME.