Innovation Workshops

Eureka! Ranch was founded more than 35 years ago by Doug Hall.  Doug was at P&G and got a record number of innovations shipped in a short period of time with a tiny staff and budget (9 products in 12 months with a  team of 3).  He did this by using a systems approach because of his knowledge of the work of Dr. W. Edwards Deming, the inspiration for Lean, Total Quality and Six Sigma.

Doug left P&G and founded Eureka! Ranch and started helping large companies like Nike, American Express, and Disney create big, disruptive ideas, which it continues to do today.

By the early 2000s, it became clear that some companies did not have the systems in place to commercialize the disruptive ideas Eureka! Ranch helped create.  They would either compromise the ideas (to pass Stage-Gate milestones) or even kill them due to fear of change.

That experience inspired a sabbatical at the University of Maine and the creation of a new field of study, Innovation Engineering®.  It includes 48 skills or competencies for creating, communicating, and commercializing meaningfully unique ideas and system driven leadership skills that help innovation leaders implement the system company-wide.  It teaches people to create disruptive ideas like we do (not guru, it’s a system), but also teaches them what to do next – all the way to market/implementation.

We found that the preacher teacher approach (lecture then test) did not work, and results varied professor to professor. That’s when we developed the patent-pending Cycles to Mastery® teaching method.  In our certification programs, these are submitted to a human grader who provides feedback.  Students adjust and submit till approved.  No test needed.  That’s what we mean by Cycles to Mastery.