About Our Moderator, Tom Funk
Tom ran development standards groups for American Express worldwide, and left Amex in 1995 to join a startup consulting company, Tier Technologies. With Tier, serving as a Managing Principal, Tom directed business process improvement and information technology engagements in healthcare, financial services, and government, in North America, Australia, and Europe.
Tom temporarily left consulting in 2004 to take over a failing major project for MAXIMUS, Inc. at the Los Angeles Unified School District. After a year in LA, he took over the MAXIMUS Education Systems Division as President, and spent the next two years re-architecting the organization, re-engineering the major product (student information systems), and rebuilding product branding and marketing.
He left MAXIMUS in 2007 and, with former partners from Tier Technologies, set up a consulting group focused on review and measurement of operational efficiencies for both public and private entities. This group, Provincia Solutions, Inc., provides strategic planning and problem resolution for corporate leadership, technology, organizational structure, and communications.
Tom joined IMC in 2007 and now serves on the AZ Chapter Board. Tom is our incoming 2010 President for IMC AZ.
You are Invited to Attend
An Innovation Tournament
moderated by: Tom Funk
September 11, 2009
How do your clients identify exceptional, profitable opportunities?
Innovative companies rely not only on a constant stream of ideas for improvements on existing offerings but also the creation of entirely new offerings that will shake up their market and competition, and produce major financial returns. There are many methods for creating, identifying, and processing ideas. But the challenges always remain of how to collect high-quality opportunities, how to sift through them to identify the best ideas, how to calculate likely profitability, and how to overcome risks and take the winning course of action.
Christian Terwiesch and Karl Ulrich, both from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, provide tools and examples to identify the next big opportunity for your clients in their new book, Innovation Tournaments, Creating and Selecting Exceptional Opportunities.
During this month’s session, Tom Funk, will introduce us to their methods and show us how to be part of an exciting exercise in collecting, analyzing, and selecting innovative ideas for a more effective consulting practice.
The session will walk us through the concept and operation of an Innovation Tournament. You’ll develop insights regarding using this approach to help both your own practice, and your clients.