Lynne Craig – cutting her own path

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If you have ever been spared the inconvenience of returning an online order because you could try on that watch, jacket or sunglasses virtually before hitting “buy”, you have Lynne Craig to thank. An art student turned jeweller turned entrepreneur turned academic, the Deputy Director of Innovation at the Edinburgh Futures Institute has always cut her own path. Lynne’s unconventional route into academia has given her a unique perspective and a wealth of experience that have not only enriched her own career but are being put to use for the benefit of our academic innovators of tomorrow.

As a student at the Edinburgh College of Art, Lynne studied jewellery design. She sought opportunities to innovate right from the start, embracing new technologies that were emerging in the design landscape. “I even had my BA jewellery collection launched on a CD-ROM, which was very cutting edge at the time!” she recalls. During an MA in jewellery design at the Royal College of Art, Lynne experimented with creating virtual artefacts and 3D-printed jewellery from 2004, but after graduation she needed a new outlet through which to innovate.

Lynne took up her first research post at Birmingham City University, with her Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) Associate role being funded by an AHRC and TSB (Technology Strategy Board) research project, looking at the future of jewellery retail in partnership with a family-run Hatton Garden jeweller, Holts Lapidary London. The jewellery school at Birmingham City University is the largest teaching institution for the specialisation in Europe, and it was there that Lynne experienced a heady mix of the traditional and the avant garde that would inform much of her future career. Design software and emergent technologies rubbed up against 100-year-old tools and machinery still in production, creating an environment in which ambitious, experimental design needn’t come at the cost of high craft. It was fertile ground for Lynne, and she hit upon an idea with huge commercial potential.

Lynne took augmented reality (AR) - which was still in an embryonic state in 2007 – and worked with a technology company to develop software that could make virtual pieces of jewellery look as though they were worn on the body, a truly radical development and the beginning of the Virtual Try On (VTO) experiences that we are so accustomed to today. Lynne co-founded joint venture spinout company Holition, secured investment, and was one of the first to take the concept to market worldwide. From jewellery to watches to make up and clothes, Lynne’s technology was embraced by clients from across the retail sector, and Holition remains a leader in the VTO space.

As a business leader in an emerging field, Holition was increasingly asked to collaborate with universities on design projects, and Lynne found herself drawn towards an environment where she could explore not only the technological potential of augmented reality, but the meaning of it too.

I became really fascinated by questions around why we're doing this and what its potential could be. So I became Non- Executive Director at the business and moved into an academic space that gave me the freedom to explore these questions from a different perspective.

At the London College of Fashion (LCF), Lynne was Founder and Director of the Digital Anthropology Lab, where she was employed to set a new digital research agenda for the College and developed collaborations across industry, research and new talent. She had a keen focus on emerging technologies, and began experimenting with the possibilities of soft robotics and AI within the context of fashion. But she ran out of road in terms of the technological possibilities she was able to exploit at LCF and was looking for the next challenge. “I knew that I wanted to map disciplines and technologies together,” she says, “and I needed to find something that enabled me to work in those liminal spaces of complex collaboration, working with technology.”

Lynne came to the University of Edinburgh in 2021, taking up the role of Design Informatics Programme Director. She was drawn to the University by the possibilities that the National Robotarium, the Edinburgh Futures Institute and Design Informatics could unlock in terms of collaborations and innovation, and she wasted no time in redesigning the programme to explore those possibilities. Under Lynne’s direction, the Design Informatics MA now incorporates pilot course modules including, ‘design robotics,’ ‘smart data cities,’ ‘designing data ecologies’ and ‘fashion informatics,’ which all knit together disparate disciplines and expertise to create positive, future-focused outputs.

As an academic who has taken a non-traditional route, Lynne has encountered obstacles as well as opportunities. The standards by which academic output is usually valued and recognised doesn’t neatly encompass an innovation-focused practice, and so progression can be slow. But in her role of Deputy Director of Innovation at the Edinburgh Futures Institute, Lynne is taking her valuable translational knowledge experience to help current and future generations of academic innovators to thrive.

The University’s Innovation Career Path, which is carving out a recognised progression route for academics who want to commercialise and engage with industry, is drawing on Lynne’s deep knowledge base in this area, and she is keen for future innovation scholars to benefit from her experience.

I’ve spun out an innovation business from academia, but I've also spun back into the university ecosystem as a practitioner and brought with me all of that entrepreneurial knowledge and thinking about what makes the right conditions for innovation to succeed. It’s really important that we are making this shift in defining what research and innovation outputs are, so that there’s a defined space for innovation scholars and the support to help them flourish.