Matthew Horne

Matthew is Chief Executive Officer at Innovation Unit – responsible for designing and delivering some of our largest projects and for business development. He leads our work on Climate Action and nature recovery. Proud to live in Yorkshire he volunteers as part of the York Climate Commission, is a member of an Academy Trust and is the Youth Manager and children’s cricket coach at a local club. 

Matthew has developed a number of our methodologies including ‘radical efficiency’ – innovations that deliver different, better, lower cost public services; our approach to coproduction with people with lived experience; our methodology for ‘adopting and adapting’ proven innovations in new places; our randomised control trial in secondary schools; and setting up a social impact bond to fund a new approach to alternative provision.

For the last five years he has been working on the transformation of community mental health for adults and older adults in different systems including Edinburgh, Greater Manchester, York, and Derbyshire. 

Matthew has also led much of our work on innovation for children and families, including the design and delivery of the Children’s Social Care Innovation Programme for the DfE – a multi-million pound investment in 95 local authorities in England. More recently he has worked in partnership with Hertfordshire, Leeds and North Yorkshire to implement social care innovations in a further 18 local authorities. He also led our research team in an ESRC funded research programme on innovation in social care led by Sussex University.

Before joining Innovation Unit Matthew worked on public service innovation and improvement for the Department for Education, Cabinet Office, Design Council, Participle and Demos.

Email Matthew