Innovation and new ventures team from Fusion Labs to join Deloitte

Professional services firm Deloitte has further strengthened its business model innovation and ventures capabilities, with the team from leading innovation, strategy and new ventures consultancy Fusion Labs to join Monitor Deloitte – the firm’s strategy practice.  

Established in 2013, founding partners Patrick Crooks and current CEO Matthew Adendorff’s business is known for building substantial new revenue streams for clients by uniquely blending corporate strategy with entrepreneurial execution.

Fusion Labs’ expertise includes end-to-end strategy and innovation services that drive business growth through new business models, emerging technologies and uplifting innovation capability. The end result can be anything from new customer propositions to successful new ventures.

Its 21 people are located in Sydney and Melbourne. Patrick Crooks, and the CEO, Matthew Adendorff, will become Deloitte Consulting partners.

Deloitte Australia CEO, Adam Powick, said: “Innovation is on the agenda of every executive and board and is part of Deloitte’s DNA.  When done well, it can create new market opportunities, establish competitive advantage and deliver improved customer and business outcomes.

“Adding to our existing and strong capabilities in this space, this is a bold and exciting investment for our firm and we are very excited to welcome Patrick, Mathew and their team to Deloitte.” 

Deloitte Australia Managing Partner, Consulting, Ellen Derrick, said: “Our clients continue to experience disruption from multiple forces, including impacts and opportunities driven by the pandemic. New business models, solutions and ventures can help unlock additional sources of growth, and innovation needs to be central to this.

“The existing consulting market for innovation and related services, particularly building digitally-driven innovation capability, is large and continues to grow.

“Bringing together strategy, business design, digital and engineering capabilities, and working with our clients to develop their innovation portfolios including building, commercialising and scaling high potential ideas, Fusion Labs is an excellent fit for our business.”

Monitor Deloitte partner, and Deloitte Consulting Chief Strategy Officer, Jeremy Drumm, said: “The Fusion Labs team is a market leader in supporting clients to develop, build and run their end-to-end innovation portfolio.  Their unique and differentiated tools, techniques, and expertise are central to building executive confidence and taking action.

“The team is going to complement the existing expertise across our business, with Fusion Labs’ specialised skills and network allowing us to better help our clients identify, map out and deliver innovations including digital ventures, ecosystem building, emerging technologies and disruptive models.”

Incoming Deloitte Partner and Fusion Labs founding partner, Patrick Crooks, said: “In 2013 we saw this wave of global disruption coming from afar. Australian corporates needed to tackle this uncertainty and ride the wave, rather than get swamped by it, and we believed we could lead this change.

“We were not an overnight success, but we had already proven our corporate venturing model in many markets around the world. Our Australian clients loved that our teams have entrepreneurial street-cred but also really understand what it takes for corporates to grow through innovation.”

Incoming Deloitte Partner and Fusion Labs CEO, Matthew Adendorff, said: “Fusion Labs has deliberately focussed on building teams with entrepreneurial backgrounds. It's this experience that gives us the rare capability to turn customer opportunities from concept into successful ventures, based on our past experiences in venturing and genuinely high product/technical development capabilities. 

“We are excited to be joining a firm in Deloitte that values our past experiences, shares similar cultural values and can offer us true global scale, subject matter expertise and added scrutiny into new venture models.”

The Fusion Labs team will formally join Deloitte on 12 July, 2021. Terms of the transaction are confidential.