DR Robert kaY

/ Co-founder & Executive Director

Dr Robert Kay is the co-founder and Managing Director of Incept Labs, establishing the company in 2008.

Rob’s career has continuously moved between industry and academia. Formerly, he was Head of Strategic Innovation at Westpac Banking Corporation; a Senior Lecturer in Information Systems and Organisational Development at the University of Technology, Sydney, and a research analyst at Bovis Lend Lease.

Working on a variety of research and evaluation projects, Rob has led Incept Labs’s work with senior leaders exploring organisational resilience, innovation, and corporate governance. The largest of these involved interviews with Chairs of 100 organisations around Australia for the Australian Institute of Company Directors. He also led a world-first study examining the differences between public and private sector innovation.

Leveraging his experience in academia, systems theory, and organisational learning, Rob has also been involved in numerous evaluations of school transformation and professional development programs across South Australia, Victoria, the Northern Territory, and Malaysia, including multiple studies of culturally responsive education, especially for Indigenous and First Nations learners. This work has coincided with extensive research on the development of scalable soft skill assessment methods. This has included the development and on-going delivery of rich learning and assessment programmes in partnership with the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN ESCAP) and Monash University.

For the past three years, Rob has been leading work with the Institute of Public Accountants (IPA), one of Australia’s three recognised professional accounting bodies. This work has established a comprehensive set of holistic professional competencies and developed a microcredential framework. This has resulted in the first ever professional qualification that can be attained purely through microcredentials. Building on this exciting work has led to the establishment of a joint venture between Incept Labs and the IPA to bring these developments to organisations and educational institutions around the world.

Rob holds a Bachelor’s degree with first class honours in curriculum development and worldview change, whilst his PhD involved the application of biological systems theory to improving learning and resilience in organisations. He has also completed the Company Directors course at AICD.