In under a decade, Octopus went from startup to serving millions of customers across 18 countries, through a global energy crisis, without a traditional HR department or a management consulting firm in sight. What made that possible was the Octopus Operating System™: the way we organise, decide and move. Octonova exists to put it to work inside your organisation.
Every one of these was built and scaled using the Octopus Operating System™.
Every week, senior leaders from some of the world's biggest companies reach out to Octopus. They've seen the customer satisfaction scores. They've read the stories about flat structures and no HR department. And they want to know if whatever we've built can work for them.
The honest answer is: yes, but not in the way most consultancies would sell it to you.
Octopus didn't grow by following a framework. We grew by building a different kind of operating model, one where authority sits with the people closest to the work, small teams own real outcomes, and energy flows toward the customer rather than into approval chains.
We call it the Octopus Operating System™. We built it under real pressure, during a global energy crisis, while scaling across 18 countries, with millions of new customers arriving every year.
Octonova exists to transfer that capability into other organisations. Not as advice. Not as a slide deck. By embedding the people who actually built it inside your teams.
Built from nothing to the top energy company in the UK, and Europe's fastest-growing start-up.
85% of employees recommend Octopus as a great place to work.
In fast-changing markets, slow decision-making compounds. Every approval chain, every committee, every "let's schedule a follow-up" is a competitive risk. Octopus grew its UK market share dramatically through the 2021 to 2022 energy crisis because we could move fast and change things.
The goal isn't to make you reliant on us. It's to leave your organisation genuinely stronger. We embed people, transfer skills, and step back. When we leave, your teams should be able to run the system themselves and make it better.
Decks don't move organisations forward. Results do. We measure success by what's different for your customers, your people and your business, not by what we produced along the way.
We build highly connected, fluid, resilient and adaptive living organisms, with the ability to respond to today's ever changing world.
Five connected layers, from the customer at the centre out to the culture that holds the whole thing together.
Customer experience isn't a department that exists alongside the “real” business. It is the business. How decisions get made, how teams are structured, how performance is measured, all of it starts with the customer. That's why Octopus has a 4.8 Trustpilot score across 735,000 reviews.
The people closest to the problem should be empowered to solve it. The universal model puts small, multidisciplinary teams in charge of decisions close to where the work happens, without escalation or hand-offs. We've proved this can scale: our customer teams own end-to-end outcomes for millions of customers.
People operations, finance, legal, marketing, learning, product and senior leadership all have one job: to make looking after customers easier. Every process it runs, every decision it makes, should be in service of the teams doing the work. When enablement starts serving itself, the whole system slows down.
Internal systems should make your people faster, not slower. At Octopus, we built our own tech, Kraken, because existing systems were designed for processes, not people. The result: higher satisfaction at lower cost.
Culture isn't a values statement or an HR initiative. It's the operating condition that makes everything else possible. When culture is right, teams move fast, take real ownership, and hold each other to account without being told to.
We bring you inside the system and activate change by learning from those who have already lived it.
Sharing how the Octopus Operating System™ works, talk to the people running it, and leave with a clear sense of what it could mean for your organisation.
Immersion sessions put your leadership team inside the Octopus Operating System™ not as a case study, but as a lived experience.
Facilitating deep-dive diagnostics, working alongside teams ready to go further to identify exactly where the operating system could take root and what would need to change to activate it.
Implementing the Operating System for teams ready to make change. Workshops, operating model design, embedded practitioners who've done this for real. Working alongside you to transfer capability into your teams.
The Octopus Operating System™ wasn't designed in a lab. It was refined while the company was growing at full speed, under serious pressure, with real consequences for getting it wrong.
Across 18 countries, the same operating principles scaled without the bureaucracy that typically follows global expansion.
With millions of new customers arriving rapidly, service quality went up, not down. 4.8 stars on Trustpilot, across 735,000 reviews.
No traditional HR department. No management consulting firms. Growth driven by how the system was designed, not by adding headcount and process.
We're not for everyone. The organisations that get the most from working with us tend to share one thing: they know the way they're currently operating isn't going to get them where they need to go.
You're adding headcount but losing speed. Decisions that used to happen in a room now take weeks. The energy that made you great is leaking into coordination.
You've got the strategy. You've probably had the consultants. But the change isn't sticking and you're not sure why. The answer is usually systemic, not strategic.
You care about how your customers feel, and you know your organisation isn't built to deliver the experience you want. That gap is fixable, and it starts with how teams are structured.
You're not looking for another report. You want operators embedded in your teams, doing the real work, changing how decisions actually get made. That's exactly what we do.
A selection of organisations we've worked with and what changed when the Octopus Operating System™ was embedded inside them.
Bulb Energy collapsed into special administration in November 2021. Octopus acquired the business a year later and migrated every account within six months, holding a 4.8-star Trustpilot rating throughout and returning £1.5bn to the UK taxpayer.
In December 2023, Octopus acquired Shell Energy's UK retail business. We completed the full customer and colleague migration in two months, shattering our own previous record by four months, with zero service interruptions and a 4.9-star Trustpilot rating from migrated customers.
The Experience Lab is a custom built, fully equipped and immersive environment in Octopus Energy's Coventry space. It's designed for teams who need to think clearly, move fast, and leave with something real.
The usual environment creates the usual dynamics. Changing the setting changes what's possible.
Most teams have read the playbooks. What's missing is somewhere to practise.
We don't just give you the space, we take you through an experience. Each one is designed and facilitated by Octonova practitioners: people who built and ran this model, not consultants who advised on it.
What makes an organisation work differently?
Experience the Octopus Operating System™ end to end, and see how culture, structure and technology connect as one system.
Full dayWho are we, and who do we want to become?
Eight connected experiences in one day, from Future and Purpose through to DNA and Legacy. Design what your system amplifies.
Full dayHow should work actually work?
Put the customer close, put the power close, and let the work flow. Design the organisation around the work, not the org chart.
Full dayHow do we keep changing?
Diagnose what's slowing you down, rebuild the adaptive loop, and build a system that learns and moves faster than the problems it faces.
Full dayEach experience opens into focused half-day Design Labs. Eight for Culture alone, from Future and Purpose to Principles and Legacy. One real challenge, designed around you.
Bleacher and stackable seating, full AV capability
Flexible layout, additional tables and chairs in store
Splits into sections of 36 and 24, with kitchen and two meeting rooms
Seated boardroom, additional chairs on request
No fixed tech, fully moveable furniture
Total maximum capacity: 140 people
Full or half-day sessions for your leadership team or whole organisation, with full use of AV and breakout spaces.
Round tables, panels and theatre-style talks, with catering facilities and flexible seating for up to 140.
Bring distributed teams together for a focused day, in a purpose-built environment rather than an open-plan office.
We take a small number of external bookings each month. Tell us what you're trying to change and we'll tell you which experience fits.
Opening October 2026 · octonova@octoenergy.com 6th Floor, Octopus Energy Ltd, Two Friargate, Station Square, Coventry, CV1 2FL
