Next Decade of Innovation - 10th Anniversary Symposium
MPD (now MII-PS) focuses on teaching methodologies and providing hands-on real world experiences on design thinking, innovation and managing the “fuzzy front end” of the design process. Highlighted by the award winning Integrated Product Development course (IPD) - the capstone course of the MII-PS program - MII-PS has inspired courses, programs and businesses nationally and internationally through books, workshops, and presentations.
Recognizing that the next 10 years will expose even greater challenges and opportunities, in the spring of 2013 the MPD program celebrated its 10 year anniversary by inviting forward thinking industry leaders on innovation to present and discuss what they saw as keys to Innovating in the Next Decade!
Symposium Speaker Bios
Dee Kapur retired in November 2012 as Vice Chairman and Chief Product Officer of Navistar International Corporation, America's largest manufacturers of trucks, diesel engines, school buses and a company whose roots go back to 1831. For most of his decade long career at Navistar, Dee ran the Truck Group which accounted for the lions share of the company's revenue and profitability. He helped revive the company's product lines, expanded into new segments such as defense, and pushed for a global footprint especially in emerging markets like China and India. He led the crafting of relationships with several partners in the process, including Caterpillar, Ford and Mahindra & Mahindra in India. Prior to Navistar, Dee had a 25-year career at Ford Motor Company with stints in product development, engineering, quality and in Hiroshima, Japan. Towards the conclusion of his Ford term, Dee ran the Ford F Series business and Ford Outfitters...the business group responsible for all Ford SUV's.
Dee is passionate about product and manufacturing leadership, about playing and succeeding in Global markets and building a brand that reflects that mission. He has been a long-term partner with Carnegie Mellon in the IPD program, sponsoring half a dozen IPD classes over the years, both at Ford and at Navistar.
Dee believes a nation's wealth comes only from doing the heavy lifting involved in building products that are complex and consequential. He likes to observe…"there is a big difference between long hours and hard work"! Dee holds a bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering and a Masters in Industrial Administration. He holds three US patents in automotive seat and switch design.
Donna Sturgess is President & Founding Partner of Buyology Inc. and formerly Global Head of Innovation, GlaxoSmithKline.
Donna is a strategist and senior marketer with over 25 years of both US and global experience at Glaxo SmithKline where she was the commercial head of large brand portfolios prior to her innovation role.
At Buyology she is a visionary proponent of building clients’ brands through a deeper understanding of the nonconscious drivers of attention, engagement and persuasion to better understand customer choice and why people buy what they buy. Forbes named Buyology in 2011 as one of the Top 100 Most Promising Companies in America.
Donna frequently writes and speaks internationally on the elements of creating remarkable brands. Her articles have appeared in many magazines and books including Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Brand Week, Advertising Age and other press. In 2011, CEO Read called her book, Eyeballs Out, one of the Top 25 Books on Business.
Among her awards Donna has been recognized as:
- Top 15 Women in business by Ernst & Young
- The Quantum Leap Award winner for “changing the game” in business, by the Advertising Women of New York
- Top 20 Innovation Bloggers in 2011
Eric Close has extensive experience building and managing product and service based technology companies that disrupt traditional industries. In 2003 Eric acquired RedZone Robotics, Inc., a custom robot manufacturer that he transformed into a global underground wastewater asset management service provider. Eric served as the President and CEO of RedZone and oversaw the development and commercialization of the software and robotics technology platform that quantifies and automates the analysis of underground infrastructure and pipeline systems. He grew the company from 3 employees to a business with over $20m sales that services customers in 40 states, 35 countries and 9 of the 10 largest U.S. cities. In 2012, Close raised $33m and sold a minority stake to two leading private equity firms ABS Capital Partners and Four Winds Capital Management providing working capital to the company and a liquidity event to early investors. Eric currently serves on RedZone’s Board of Directors.
Prior to RedZone, Eric founded and served as the President of PartsZone Inc. supplying aftermarket parts for discontinued equipment used in the construction equipment industry. PartsZone acquired and integrated 5 independent companies and over 30 independent brands since its founding in 2002. The company employs over 65 people and delivers over $20m in sales.
Eric’s early entrepreneurial successes included the acquisition, management turnaround and sale of ProLine Services, a provider of railcar manufacturing and maintenance to Trinity Industries (NYSE:TRN) and Blue Fish Labs, Inc., a Pittsburgh based software developer to Apple Inc. (NASD:AAPL). In the 1990’s Eric served as a design engineer, product line manager, and sales engineer at Performance Controls, Inc., a motion controls company.
Recently, Eric joined the board of directors serving as Executive Chairman for Combank Medical, Inc., a web based E-learning platform focused on active learning technology for medical professionals. Eric holds twelve patents in the fields of robotics, software, and controls. He holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Lehigh University and an M.B.A. from Carnegie Mellon University.
Eric served as a past Director of the Pittsburgh Technology Council and the Pittsburgh Technology Collaborative. Eric and his wife, Kelly, have been married for 12 years and have two daughters.
Megan Stanton is the Associate Director of Business Design, at BMW Designworks in Los Angeles. Her work blends traditional design research and strategy with a larger view of business and management consulting. At Designworks, her time is split between two main clients, BMW and John Deere.
Prior to joining Designworks Megan ran research and strategy programs for the mobile division of Samsung Electronics as a Senior Design Researcher & Strategist for Samsung Design America, and design research programs for LG, DIRECTV, Sony Pictures, and Hulu as the Senior Manager of Design at a small quantitative firm, Vital Findings, as well as five years of concept creation programs for next-generation and all-new vehicles at Nissan, as a Product Planner in Nissan’s Advanced Planning & Strategy department. At Nissan she developed front-end concepts for the Nissan Leaf, Sentra, Rogue, Murano, Titan, Infiniti JX, QX, and Etherea concept, and she sat on two global committees to define technology strategies for HMI and electric vehicle initiatives.
Megan is a graduate of the MPD program, a previous sponsor of the IPD course, and holds an undergraduate degree in Industrial Design from CMU’s design school. She had the opportunity to first cut her teeth in Integrated Product Development when working on the International Lone Star for Dee Kapur, as an intern and then as a two-time student of the IPD course.