Larry Keeley

About Larry Keeley

Almost everything about the way innovation is taught and practiced and asserted is wrong, says Larry Keeley, a man on a mission to investigate the root causes of innovation failure and set businesses back on the right path.

Keeley believes that companies can double or triple their success rates by approaching innovation in a measured and logical fashion. For him, innovation doesn’t suddenly appear from a random brainstorming session. He advocates a measured approach in which knowledge of customer needs is combined with intelligence about the market, key players in the industry and a company’s own capabilities. New products are not necessarily the goal. He argues that changes in customer experience, processes or business models, are far more likely to give sustained advantage.

With his mentor, Jay Doblin, he co-founded the innovation and strategy consulting firm Doblin back in 1981 to further the understanding of innovation and its failure. Since 1979 he has worked with a wide range of pioneering enterprises including Apple, Citigroup, Coca-Cola, Diageo, ExxonMobil, Hallmark, McDonalds, Motorola, Pfizer, and Zurich Financial Services.

He has been described as the thought-leader’s thought leader and is a member of Business Innovation Factorys research advisory council. He is also a globally recognized teacher, speaker, writer, thinker, and a champion of the potential impact of a strategic combination of design and business. Bloomberg Business week have named Keeley one of seven Innovation Gurus that are changing the field and have also selected Keeley as one of the 27 most influential designers in the world impressive since he does not claim to be one.

He is the author of “Ten Types of Innovation and Taming of the New and has been featured in Business Week and Fast Times.

He is a board member for the Institute of Design at Illinois Institute of Technology, where he also teaches graduate design strategy and he is a lecturer in innovation at Kellogg and University of Chicago and was a senior fellow of the Center for Business Innovation in Boston. He is a member of the Chicago Public Radio board. Praise for Ten types of Innovation This book provides fantastic guidance on how to develop an innovation culture within your business; to keep staff thinking of new ways to improve your offering and refine what made you successful in the first place. – Start Your Business