Tony Ulwick
Cofounder and Managing Director
Tony Ulwick is the creator of Outcome-Driven Innovation and the
founder and CEO of Strategyn, Inc., a global innovation management
firm with offices in eight countries. Tony's work with Fortune 1000
companies has a proven track record of transforming innovation into a
systematic and predictable business process. Tony is a thought
leader, author, and a long-time practitioner in the field of
innovation. Over the past two decades he has invented, patented,
and proven the ODI methodology. ODI has been used successfully by
dozens of the world's leading firms, including Kroll, Microsoft,
Ingersoll-Rand, Reynolds & Reynolds, Advanced Medical Optics,
Kimberly-Clark, and many others. Tony has published dozens of
articles on strategy and innovation including the Harvard Business
Review articles "Turn Customer Input into Innovation" and "The
Customer-Centered Innovation Map," as well as the MIT Sloan
Management Review article "Giving Customers a Fair Hearing." He is
the author of the best-selling book What Customers Want. Tony's
experience spans nearly every industry, and he has worked
hand-in-hand with leading companies to improve every aspect of the
innovation process. Tony has conducted extensive primary research
and analysis over the past two decades in order to understand what
customer inputs are needed to excel at innovation. And he has
conducted hundreds of quantitative market studies in order to develop
advanced, effective, and accurate methods for identifying and
prioritizing opportunities. Tony has developed a systematic
methodology for generating and validating solution ideas with ODI,
and he has led dozens of ODI-based idea generation projects with
experts that have resulted in breakthrough product concepts. His
in-depth knowledge of the innovation process provides unique and
valuable insight for Strategyn Equity Partners. Earlier in his
career, Tony worked in IBM's PC division for 10 years. He has a
bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of
Rhode Island and a Master's Degree in Business Administration from
the Florida Institute of Technology.
Jay Haynes
Cofounder and Managing Director
Jay Haynes has been an entrepreneur and private equity investment
professional for the past 18 years. He is an award-winning CEO with
extensive experience formulating and executing growth strategies;
recruiting, building and leading product development and operating
teams; leading and managing product development; creating financial
models; managing budgets; raising equity capital; and serving on the
board of directors of growth companies. Jay was previously CEO of the
networking software company Blue Falcon Networks (which later became
Akimbo after a merger with NexTV). Blue Falcon's investors included
Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Sprout Group and Zone Ventures, and Akimbo's
investors included Kleiner Perkins, Cisco and AT&T. Jay was
actively recruited by Blue Falcon's investors during a difficult
stage in the company's life. He was responsible for formulating a new
strategic plan, rebuilding the technical and product development
teams, recruiting a new executive team, raising new equity capital,
and executing the new plan. Prior to Blue Falcon, Jay was the founder
and CEO of mValue, a privacy software company, whose lead investors
were SunAmerica and Zone Ventures. At mValue, he created the
company's strategy, product roadmap, and financial model and raised
equity and debt for the company. Jay recruited and managed the
company's executive team, and he led the successful development and
launch of three software products. Earlier in his career, Jay worked
as an investment professional with GTCR Golder Rauner, a leading
private equity firm in Chicago with over $3 billion under management.
Jay started his career in leveraged buy-outs and was a founding
employee of the buyout firm that created Steinway Musical Instruments
(NYSE: LVB) through a series of acquisitions. Jay also co-founded The
Aviation Group with his father, a former Naval aviator. Jay has
served as an Adjunct Professor at the Presidio School of Management
and at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of
Business. Jay graduated Phi Beta Kappa with highest honors from Brown
University, and he received his MBA with distinction from Harvard
Business School.
You can connect with Jay on LinkedIn.
