Jeanne Liedtka is a Professor of Management at the Darden Graduate School of Business at the University of Virginia. Formerly the Executive Director of the School’s Batten Institute, a foundation established to develop thought leadership in the fields of entrepreneurship and corporate innovation, Jeanne has also served as Chief Learning Officer for the United Technologies Corporation (UTC), headquartered in Hartford, Connecticut, and as the Associate Dean of the MBA Program at Darden. Jeanne’s current teaching responsibilities focus on design thinking, innovation, and organic growth in the MBA and Executive Education Programs at Darden.

Jeanne’s current research interests focus on exploring how design thinking can be used to enrich our ability to create inclusive strategic conversations about organizational futures. Her book, The Catalyst: How You Can Lead Extraordinary Growth, co-authored with R. Rosen and R. Wiltbank, was based on a three year study of operating managers who excelled at producing revenue growth in mature organizations. Published in March 2009, The Catalyst was named one of Business Week’s best innovation and design books of 2009. Her most recent book, Designing for Growth: A design toolkit for managers was published in June, 2011.

Jeanne joined Darden in 1989, having received her DBA in Management Policy from Boston University and her MBA from the Harvard Business School. She has been involved in the corporate strategy field since beginning her career as a strategy consultant for the Boston Consulting Group.

Tim Ogilvie is the CEO of Peer Insight, an innovation strategy consultancy, where he has made pioneering contributions to the emerging disciplines of service innovation, customer experience design, and business model exploration. His clients include AARP, Bank of America, Diebold, GE, Hallmark, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Kimberly-Clark, Nike, Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, Starwood Hotels, and The Hartford. His projects seek to create organic growth by using design thinking methods to link new customer experiences to scalable business models.

He has also consulted to five governments and influenced innovation policy from the United States to the European Union to Taiwan. In 2007 he coauthored "Seizing the White Space: Innovative Service Concepts in the United States," published by Tekes, the Finnish funding agency for R&D. This publication established the precepts for service innovation that are being embraced by public policy makers and leading private firms in the European Union.

Tim is a visiting lecturer at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business, where he teaches customer-centered design and innovation. He holds a master's degree in Computer Integrated Manufacturing Systems from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a BA in English from the University of Virginia.

More information: www.designingforgrowthbook.com and www.peerinsight.com (sorry not live links)

Designing for Growth is one of Columbia University Press top selling business books.