Big Echo

Big Echo is making innovation clear, purposeful and open to all. We help SMEs use innovation to grow, energise teams and work better. We're not a consultancy.

We help teams reconnect with creativity - we foster curiosity and agility to unlock ideas with demonstrable impact. We're not an agency. We're a partnership of advisors, researchers, tech consultants, AI trainers, artists, educators - even an improv comedian. We get stuck in, united by a passion for unlocking creativity and proving that anyone can innovate. We are led by Tom Parson, creative entre

preneur, coach and former agency owner

Nobody else in Greater Manchester has Tom's unique experience:

🤲🏻 Nurturing
5 years as an educator and workshop facilitator with a passion for inclusivity

📈 Commercial
10 years as agency director and hands-on strategic leader

🤓 Technical
20 years building digital products, masters-qualified in UX research

💡 Creative
Philosophy graduate and 25 years as a musician and performer

Explore our Facebook content or find out more on our website.

04/09/2026

Using AI to help run our businesses is a bit like getting the train. Confused? Watch my latest reel and find out why we should be using AI like adventurers, not passengers!

28/08/2026

AI as a cheat code? Or making our lives, and our businesses, distinctly average? In my latest reel I talk about why you definitely should NOT use AI as your starting point.

Small business | innovation

23/08/2026

What happens when AI becomes something more than a helping hand in your work, and it becomes a full blown addiction?

The more you use AI as a starting point, the less you trust your own abilities and that can be a slippery slope. Have a listen to what I’ve got to say on this matter in my latest reel, and let me know your thoughts!

13/08/2026

Got a long list of ideas and no idea where to start? That’s a pretty common issue that small business owners face. A weighted matrix is one of my favourite tools for exactly this situation. You score each idea against two factors that matter to you, map them visually, and a messy list becomes a clear set of priorities, with some logic to back it up!

I’ve written a step by step guide to how it works on the website, so next time you’re struggling to prioritise all your ideas, give this Play a try.

07/08/2026

When a tech solution stops working as well as it once did, the instinct is often to wipe the slate clean and start again. But the problems people report are rarely the whole story, and building something new on top of misunderstood problems tends not to go very well!

I recently ran a co-creation workshop with Place for Youth CIC to get to the bottom of what was actually going wrong with their platform, before anyone touched a line of code. And one of the most valuable things that came out of it had nothing to do with technology at all.

Read the full article to find out what the real challenge was 🔗

30/07/2026

When I ran my agency, we invoiced clients the way other agencies did, and it never really occurred to me to question why we did it that way. Until cashflow problems started.

The best reason I could find for doing it that way was “that’s just how it’s done.” Which, when I said it out loud, didn’t feel like much of a reason at all.

Once I realised that we’d just been playing someone else’s game all along, I changed our whole approach and saw an almost immediate improvement.

Does this sound familiar? Whose game are you playing right now?

Full article on the website 🔗

23/07/2026

I gave my first talk last week since my public speaking training and I loved it. Thanks so much to for helping me to prepare! 🎤

I spoke about how running my agency landed me in A&E, and how using AI in the wrong way can exacerbate our worst habits and accelerate burnout. But how, when used in the right way, AI can enhance the human skills that matter most as technology keeps evolving.

Watch the full video on the Big Echo website 🖥️

08/07/2026

As someone who has spent most of their life thinking my curiosity was a problem and that I had too many interests, discovering that curiosity is actually a superpower has been empowering, to say the least.

Curiosity is what helps me ask better questions, connect ideas across different areas, and see the bigger picture. Being a generalist is one of the reasons my clients choose to work with me.

You can read more about this and my concept of “comb-shaped people” in my latest article on the Big Echo site.

02/07/2026

Waiting to get your idea perfect before you start? That might be exactly what’s keeping you stuck. 😬 It can be tempting to try to come up with the perfect version and then aim for that straight away, but how about trying a Minimum Viable Product or MVP? An MVP is the smallest possible version of a solution that we can make, that still adds enough value to be genuinely useful.

I explore this in my latest article, available now on on the Big Echo website.

26/06/2026

What if your vision for success is actually demotivating you? 😬

Research shows that picturing where you want to be can trick your brain into thinking you’re already there. So I use an alternative: fuzzy goals. Loose enough to keep me curious and open to opportunity and clear enough to make decisions.

Mine for Big Echo is: help small organisations validate and implement new ideas.

Full article on the website 🔗

Address

86 Princess Street
Manchester
M16NG

Website

https://bigecho.co.uk/

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