Larry Keeley

Innovation Master

BIG IDEAS

• Ten Types of Innovation
  Most people equate “innovation” with “new products.” Through a decade of analysis Larry had identified nine other types, and innovators overlook them at their peril. As it happens, product innovation alone has the lowest return on innovation investment. Keeley widens the frame to include innovation in customer experience, business models, core and enabling processes, channels, brand, and more. Through these enabling innovations companies have enjoyed sustainable success, such as Wal-Mart’s real-time inventory management systems, Apple’s digital media platform, and Target’s customer experience approach.

SNAPSHOT BIO

Larry Keeley is a business advisor and speaker who has worked to develop more effective growth strategies and innovation methods for over 27 years. He is president and co-founder of Doblin Inc., a Monitor Group company and a partner in the Monitor Group. By applying proprietary, comprehensive innovation systems, Doblin has consistently and materially improved its clients’ innovation success rates.

BusinessWeek recently named Keeley one of seven Innovation Gurus who are changing the field, and specifically cited Doblin for having many of the most sophisticated tools for delivering innovation effectiveness.

Since 1979, Keeley has worked on innovation effectiveness at companies including Aetna, American Express, Amoco, Apple, BP, Citigroup, Coca-Cola, Diageo, Ford, GE, Hallmark, McDonald’s, Monsanto, Motorola, Novartis, Pfizer, Shell, SKT, Steelcase, Target, Texas Instruments, WellPoint, Whirlpool, and Zurich Financial Services. He lectures frequently and publishes regularly on strategic aspects of innovation. His forthcoming book on innovation effectiveness, The Taming of the New, is expected next year.

Larry teaches graduate innovation strategy classes at the Institute of Design in Chicago, the first design school in the U.S. with a Ph.D. program, where he is also a board member. He lectures at executive education programs at Kellogg Graduate School of Management and in their Masters of Manufacturing Management program, and at business schools around the world. Keeley was a Senior Fellow of the Center for Business Innovation, in Boston. He is also a board member for Chicago Public Radio, where he has charted strategy for what has become the most innovative station in the public radio network in the U.S.