Business support masterclass delivered in partnership between Leeds Beckett University and Leeds City Council

'Living Lab: digital adoption for business growth' As a part of Leeds digital festival 2026 will explore how businesses are leveraging digital technologies to transform operations, develop new products and services, enhance customer experience and unlock new commercial opportunities. Through a series of practical case studies and expert insights, delegates will hear how SMEs are applying automation, data analytics, AI and digital tools to improve productivity, accelerate innovation and drive business growth. The event will focus on real-world implementation rather than theory, providing guests with actionable ideas, lessons learned and inspiration for their own digital journey. Delivered in partnership between Leeds Beckett University and Leeds City Council, the Living Lab will also highlight opportunities for SMEs to collaborate with universities and access business support to accelerate change.

Objectives

Hear directly from SME’s about their challenges and how they have successfully implemented digital innovation

Understand how digital solutions and technologies can be used to solve real world challenges.

Insights into university and industry collaboration for digital acceleration

Showcase of live examples of solutions being implemented in the region.

Signposting business support mechanisms in the region

Speakers:

Speaker #1: Jonny Ross, founder of Fleek Marketing

Jonny Ross is a Fractional CMO and growth strategist who has spent more than 15 years helping SMEs across Yorkshire and beyond grow through smarter, more commercial marketing. His route in was anything but conventional. Jonny trained and worked as an optician before moving into e-commerce, selling sunglasses online. When a Google penalty wiped out his traffic overnight, he taught himself SEO to recover it, and that hard-won knowledge became a career. Today he sits inside the leadership teams of scaling businesses as their part-time marketing director, pairing strategic thinking with deep technical know-how in search and AI visibility.

At the Living Lab, Jonny will share that journey from optician to marketing strategist, and the lessons that came with it. He'll cut through the noise on the digital essentials every SME needs to get right now, from being found online to the shift from traditional SEO towards AI-driven search, all in plain English with no jargon and a focus on what actually moves the needle for a busy business owner.

Speaker #2: Nick Edwards, Made Smarter

Nick Edwards is the Business Relationship Manager for the Made Smarter programme in West Yorkshire. Made Smarter Yorkshire & Humber supports SME manufacturers to adopt new tech, through advice, funding and training. Nick travels around local factories speaking to businesses about their plans for adopting AI, robotics, 3D printing, cybersecurity and other next-generation tech. He has delivered a range of funding schemes through the West Yorkshire Combined Authority over the past five years, including sustainability and job creation projects. Prior to that, he worked in project management for a hotel furniture manufacturer.

Speaker #3: Temitope Falana, KTP associate at The Freight Agency

Temitope Falana is Strategic Marketing Lead at Freight Agency Limited (FAL), a 40-year-old freight forwarder based in West Yorkshire. Through a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) with Leeds Beckett University, he has helped drive a fundamental shift in how the business approaches growth, innovation and market development.

Joining a traditionally reactive, relationship-led sales environment, Temitope has worked to establish a strategic marketing function grounded in market intelligence, data-informed decision-making, and AI-enabled marketing and sales processes. The work has gone beyond introducing new tools: it has supported a wider cultural change in how the business identifies opportunities, prioritises prospects and develops new commercial relationships.

Through the KTP project, FAL has built external partnerships and trade connections to support international expansion. The company has also developed a compliance documentation service designed to help UK exporters navigate Saudi Arabian customs requirements, creating a practical route into new markets while addressing a genuine customer challenge.

Speaker #4: Anne-Marie Gallagher, Business Development Manager - Leeds Beckett University

Anne-Marie works at the interface between industry and academia, connecting businesses with academic expertise to support innovation, improve productivity, and enable data-driven decision-making that delivers carbon savings. She has extensive experience working with SMEs across the region, facilitating collaborations that address real-world challenges - particularly around sustainability - by improving processes, reducing waste, and increasing resource efficiency.

Speaker #5: Nathan Cookson, Ope

Description supplied by the event organiser.