Established in 1986, the Eureka! Ranch is known for its big ideas. When organizations realize that doing the same old stuff isn’t going to cut it anymore, they come to the Eureka! Ranch with their challenges and leave with an abundance of unique solutions and possibilities.

The Eureka! Team not only gets people to invent big, disruptive ideas, but also gives them the courage and skills to take action. 

Their success is based on a scientific and data-grounded approach to creativity and innovation.  Change is difficult, but not impossible, and with Eureka! Ranch’s system, change can become reliable and repeatable. 

Before founding the Eureka! Ranch, Doug Hall 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.

In the early days, we helped large companies like Nike, American Express, and Disney create big, disruptive ideas and published Jump Start Your Brain about how to be more creative.  The Eureka! Ranch building was built in 1999 to host companies and get them out of their normal mindset to create more unique ideas.

While successful at the creation of unique ideas, we knew we needed to help companies commercialize disruptive ideas. This resulted in the publishing of 2 books on business and marketing of meaningful unique ideas and expanding our services past beyond the early stages of innovation. 

While large companies need big ideas to grow their business, all companies need to innovate. To help more companies we trained a network of “Trained Brains” to facilitate the Eureka process with small and midsize manufacturing companies. Over time our innovation process and training resulted in the creation of the Innovation Engineering System and skillset.  

Innovation Engineering was next taught to students at the University of Maine and has since expanded to more universities. Innovation leaders came to the Eureka! Ranch to learn the system and software was developed to make them more successful at applying the skills back at their organization.  Over time, the Eureka! team has continuously innovated and improved our system for innovation, including the online tools and how we educate people. 

Today the Ranch is led by CEO, Maggie Nichols, and a strong cadre of innovators, engineers, educators, and programmers, with founder, Doug Hall, remaining actively engaged as CIO and on special projects.  We help organizations in 3 ways:
1) building their innovation pipeline,
2) improving their innovation process, and
3) training their people to think more innovatively.  
We work with large multinationals, non-profits, and small and mid-size companies around the globe to help them think & act smarter, faster & more innovatively.