Reinvantage / Beyond Emerging Europe

Since 2017 I have been the head of insight and analysis at Reinvantage (formerly Emerging Europe), an institutional reinvention firm. Our work helps organisations recognise when their existing logic is becoming less viable, reposition before relevance erodes, and redesign the structural conditions required to create new value through change.

My personal expertise centres on the three areas where I've carried out and directed substantial research: investment and tourism promotion effectiveness, IT sector competitiveness, and business process outsourcing capabilities. This work involves transforming complex policy environments and market dynamics into actionable insights for governments, development agencies, and private businesses seeking to understand what's actually happening rather than what everyone assumes is happening.

I regularly work with organisations including GIZ, UNDP, and the World Bank, as well as national investment and tourism promotion agencies looking to improve their strategies. My written words can be found on our editorial platform, Beyond Emerging Europe, while recent speaking engagements have challenged audiences to reconsider their assumptions: Why Central and Eastern European destinations must abandon 'low-cost' positioning, and Why data-driven aftercare is imperative for the reinvention of investment promotion. Contact me through email or LinkedIn if you're interested in finding out more about Reinvantage or would like me to speak at an event.

Travel writing

The dream job? Kind of. For nearly 20 years I travelled the world writing about the things I saw (and tasted). And I got paid for the privilege (at one point I was paid to live in Florence for the best part of a year). I have written travel guides for Dorling Kindersley (the guides with the lovely illustrations—no, I didn't have to draw those), Rough Guides, Thomas Cook, APA/Insight, Berlitz, and several other publishers long since forgotten.

Mostly, however, I wrote (and edited) for In Your Pocket, which in pre-Covid days was the largest publisher of locally-produced city guides in Europe. I was for a long time its Europe-wide editor and co-owned the Romanian franchise.

Travel writing is not quite as glamorous as often gets made out. It can be a lonely experience, and even at the best of times never paid more than a subsistence wage. It also doesn't come without risk. I was sued several times by restaurants unhappy with what I'd written about them. I am glad to report that I won every case (eventually, and not without stress). I'd do it all again though, it was a great life. I still write about travel occasionally here at Backpacking at 50, while my Reinvantage tourism promotion work means that I have not abandoned the travel sector entirely.