Founder & CEO. Mark has been a strategic Business Innovationist for over 24 years. Prior to that he spent 12 years in advertising, packaged goods brand management and corporate new ventures.

With a bachelor’s degree from Colgate University and an M.B.A. from the University of Michigan, he joined Colgate-Palmolive, where he was invited to join the Corporate New Ventures Group, reporting to the chairman of the corporation. “We were his ‘frustration group.’ New ideas were passing through so many layers of decision-making they were getting stripped of their newness. Our charter was to ‘make new things happen.’ It was an unbelievable learning lab for a 28-year-old. It was also where I first developed my passion for innovation processes.”

His multi-dimensional experience in product development, advertising services and consulting help Mark think about innovation from all three different but complementary perspectives.

Mark believes that innovation can only be measured in one of three ways: top-line growth, driving out costs (without cutting people), or creating such customer loyalty that goods and services can command a higher price. It’s about much more than new products and services.

He also knows that the magic in innovation is not in the generation of new ideas. “It’s about an organization's commitment to nurture an idea through ‘the dark night of the innovator,’ that winding, often frustrating evolutionary maze to successful implementation.”