Diane Roberts

30 years building businesses and the people who lead them

Diane's career spans over 30 years across Ireland, the UK, the USA, Europe and Asia-Pacific. From 2002 to 2007 she served as VP of Enterprise Ireland's US Software and Services team in Silicon Valley, working directly with leading technology companies and deep inside the venture capital ecosystem.

She returned to Ireland to become Director of HBAN, the Halo Business Angel Network, and later led the Invest NI Propel Programme, one of Northern Ireland's flagship high-growth startup initiatives, where she worked with hundreds of founders, scaling teams, and investment-ready businesses.

That breadth of experience across enterprise, startup, and investment environments is what makes the growthsprint. framework different. It was built not from theory, but from direct engagement with the real challenges businesses face when trying to grow.

In 2015 she founded XPinnovates, a boutique growth consultancy specialising in strategy, market development, and business transformation. It was through this work that the need for growthsprint. became clear: a methodology that was rigorous enough to satisfy investors, simple enough for any business leader to engage with, and practical enough to produce a real action plan in a single session.

Why growthsprint. exists

growthsprint. was created to close the gap between abstract strategy and tangible execution. Most frameworks produce insight. Few produce action. The Blucanvas changes that by mapping a business across 11 strategic zones in a single collaborative session, then converting every insight directly into a prioritised 30-60-90 day execution plan.

The result is a methodology that consultants can certify in and clients can immediately engage with, producing real outputs from the very first session.