Kim Benz  is an organizational innovation expert.  She has studied innovation for over 30 years and in particular how to create BIG innovation.  She has discovered that it is not so much that BIG innovation is hard as that it is complex....a complexity that crosses over groups and organizations.  Unfortunately there are not enough tools and work processes to make this collaboration easy.  Kim knows how to do this in a way that is easy and energizing to the teams involved.  Very briefly there are two innovation areas that she is expert in.  These are:
 
1)   Translating customer needs to a technology group and the technology possibilities to customers with needs.  Kim is expert at creating a language and measures which cross the boundary of marketing to technology so both sides can understand the innovation potential.
 
and
 
2)   Catalyzing teams for BIG innovation.  With the team’s knowledge, Kim creates a unifying knowledge framework, re frames their challenge statement in terms the team completely owns, and finally get the team to identify the drivers (measures) or independent variables which drive end value. 
 
Kim has 30 plus years of innovation experience in doing just this at a major consumer products/pharmaceutical/diversified products firm.  Her proprietary techniques are easy for the people involved.   Costs are reasonable and can be taken in small steps as you see the outcome and potential applications. 

One example is the technical expertise that is housed in our universities. Kim believes this is one area of great unused potential by industry. Yes, there are many projects and partnerships but are they yielding to the market place the Big Innovations required for our future? Kim’s answer is “not anywhere near enough.”   Kim can help universities, particularly in the technology field, understand better what their customer’s needs are. She can also to present their expertise/facilities/personnel in ways the customer can appreciate and use to identify innovation potential. Kim can help industry make better use of their university contacts as well as their own internal R&D by bringing more tacit knowledge into the explicit knowledge arena.