Maria Thompson Email & Phone Number

Glenview, Il, Us

I partner with all levels of global business leadership across Test & Measurement & Electronics, Polymers & Fluids, Welding, Construction, Food Equipment, Specialty Products, and Automotive Segments to accelerate organic growth using our Customer-Back Innovation Framework and Process to govern B2B, B2C, & B2B2C NPD projects. To drive operational excellence, I develop and facilitate innovation strategy, innovation metrics, and innovation tool workshops and summits to enable proven innovation practice sharing.Workshops/ Tools: Product Roadmapping | Market Segmentation & Customer Profiling | Research Planning | Design Thinking & Voice-of-Customer/ Customer Insights | Value Proposition | Competitive Analysis | Value-based Pricing & Go To Market Strategy & Planning | Function Analysis with TRIZ & Directed Innovation (structured brainstorming) | Risk Assessment & Mitigation | Post-Phase / Post-Launch ReviewI've facilitated (FTF/Virtual) Workshops with > 250 NPD project teams in the USA, Canada, Britain, Scotland, China, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Italy, India, France, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Brazil, Romania, Poland, Czechia, and Argentina, engaging >3530 employees, resulting in the successful refocus or launch of multiple sustainably-differentiated product offerings to ITW customers.ITW (NYSE: ITW) is a Fortune 200 global multi-industry manufacturing leader with revenue of $15.9 billion in 2022. The company’s seven industry-leading segments leverage the unique ITW Business Model to drive solid growth with best-in-class margins and returns in markets where highly innovative, customer-focused solutions are required. ITW’s approximately 46,000 dedicated colleagues in 80+ Divisions and 52 countries around the world thrive in the company’s decentralized and entrepreneurial culture. http://www.itw.comhttp://www.itw.com/about-itw/were-everywhere/http://www.itw.com/about-itw/our-innovations/

I develop, facilitate and coach the application of Innovation Management methods and tools to improve organizational innovation capability. Think Innovation Method Mash-Up! • Ideality, Root Cause Analysis, Provocation, Six Thinking Hats & Directed Attention Thinking Tools, MindMapping, Lateral Thinking, Design Thinking/VOC, JTBD, Value Proposition, and Assumption Storming to understand all the parameters of the Ideal high-value Solution and constraints with current customer and competitor solutions.• TRIZ (Theory of Inventive Problem Solving) to improve the formulation of the “challenge,” generic problem reframing, constraint-busting, and subsequent evaluation and hybridization of the results.• Question Banking to transform problems to open-ended, thought-provoking questions for customer interviewing and ideation.• Facilitating Creative Leadership and Productive Thinking, breaking select Brainstorming rules.• Inventor Mentoring: helping ideators convert novel ideas and concepts to patent applications.• Innovation Strategy & Science: International Association of Innovation Professionals, ISO 56001 Innovation Management Standard.To generate novel ideas, patents, solutions and business growth I leverage proven practices of the following creativity and innovation thought leaders: Bob Galvin, Osborn-Parnes, Roger von Oech, Edward de Bono, Ellen Domb, Dr. Valery Tsourikov, Michael Bungay Stanier, Corinne Miller, Tim Hurson, Fernando Sousa, Chris Trimble, Vijay Govindarajan, Rowan Gibson, Jeffrey Baumgartner, Tom Kelly, Clayton Christensen, Braden Kelley, Gerald Haman, Sarah Miller Caldicott, Carsten Weirwille & Mick Malisic, Chuck Dymer, Therese Amabile, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Tom Peters, Rob Shelton, Bill Wiggenhorn, Franca Leeson, Ginny S. Nerlich, Dan Adams, Stefan Lindegaard, A. Osterwalder, Tony Ulwick, Dr. C. L. Karrass, Brett Trusko, Stephen Shapiro, etc.

Chicago, Il, Us

The IDS Advisory Board is a diverse, collaborative advisory group supporting the mission of IDS atUIC Business. The Board serves a critical role in linking the program’s strategic objectives with external stakeholders to drive economic growth at companies across the region. IDS Advisory Board members provide expert advice and diverse industry perspectives. The Board will help identify opportunities for strategic collaborative research and training programs and may on occasion serve as a liaison for IDS within their organizations and with industry partners.

Chicago, Il, Us

I consulted with faculty and leadership in the UIC College of Engineering, Innovation Center, and Career Resource Center to ensure engineering students received courseware, project experiences, mentoring and internships to best prepare them for corporate roles and responsibilities. This was a 4-year assignment with term limits.http://engineering.uic.edu/advisory-board-member-directory/

TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION SUMMITSustaining Main Street through Innovation Technology Innovation in Government: Beyond Logistics

Chicago, Il, Us

As the Chief Technology Office Innovation Champion, I partnered with technology leaders to ensure focus on the right forward-looking challenges and their intersections with emerging technologies to create compelling customer solutions. - I trained 44 global facilitators to design and conduct > 50 Directed Innovation (DI) brainstorming workshops and Ideation challenges in alignment with Intellectual Property Strategy to generate business growth with 100's of breakthrough ideas, patent applications, & novel solutions to consumer, product, process, service, market, organization and infrastructure problems. - I coached a global Inventor Mentor network (70) to convert high-value ideas to effective patent disclosures, increasing patent filing rates from <10% to >40-60% - I benchmarked best practice Intellectual Property Management processes, systems & tools and accelerated their adoption, working closely with our global network of Innovation & Patent Champions and lead technologists to increase organizational Innovation Capability Maturity and garner high-value Intellectual Property Rights. - I partnered with MSI innovators in India, Sri Lanka, Poland, Russia, Israel, China, and Malaysia to tailor innovation methods to local cultures.In addition to benchmarking and deploying Innovation Management Best Practices and tools (e.g. Bright Idea), I designed and delivered employee training modules:- Effective (Patent) Disclosure Writing- Inventor Mentoring- DI Facilitation (including TRIZ-derived Problem/ Assumption Storming and Question Banking)- Patent Searching, Fencing/ Design-Around & Prior Art Analysis with Thomson Clarivate, IPManager & Pantros IP

Chicago, Il, Us

Baselined existing legal service processes, identifying opportunities for improvement, prioritizing project selection through ROI analyses and best practice benchmarking, and managed the deployment of change in the Motorola legal organization, resulting in enhanced organizational capability to deliver high-quality, cost-effective legal services.• Designed simple Change Management checklists of milestones to incorporate into project plans to increase the probability of Project Success.• Defined Benchmarking methodology with generic question list for identification of processes and tools aligned with Law Department Practice areas for improvement.• Benchmarked The End of Lawyers & Richard Susskind, Tymetrix Real Rate Report, Litigation Management practices, eDiscovery vendors, Corporate Law Department structure and Client Relationship Models and provided detailed recommendations for process and technology improvements in relevant legal practice areas.• Lead IT liaison completing Separation of >50 legal tools, systems, and data bases into two robust cost-effective platforms for each of Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions ahead of schedule with zero defects. Tools and data bases included LexisNexis, Autonomy, Thomson Innovation/Analytics/Themescape (now Clarivate), and IPManager.

Chicago, Il, Us

Led a high-performing team of Intellectual Property Rights Process and Information Technology specialists, benchmarking industry best practices, applying Digital Six Sigma principles to automate patent processes for increased operational efficiency, data currency and data accuracy. Role included: 1) Program Management of Motorola strategic patent portfolio generation, facilitating >100 ideation sessions with Directed Innovation inventing process, and 2) Patent committee participation: reviewing and dispositioning innovation disclosures, using and teaching prior art searching tools and techniques.• Inspired research projects, technology acquisitions, patent application filings and patent licensing with numerous patent portfolio analyses, patent disclosure reviews & prior art searches.• Digitized entire Patent Portfolio Management lifecycle: inventor idea conception through to patent expiration and records retention compliance.• Author of 4 digital employee newsletters / aggregators: Electronic Practice of Law, Innovation Avatar, Intellectual Property Business Methods/ Software, Creative Careers.

Chicago, Il, Us

Established Invention Leadership Program to infuse culture with disciplined structured and systematic innovation (creative problem solving) acumen.• Designed & deployed Motorola University training: The Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ). • Facilitated global TRiZ-based inventing sessions to generate patentable solutions to customer and technical problems. Change management, operational excellence, and technology transition roles for software project teams.• Benchmarked best practices and developed and deployed process and technology improvements to transform more than 15 software development organizations from SEI PMM/CMM Level 1 to Level 3+ maturity.• Software Operations & Quality Manager, Motorola New Enterprises: Developed and managed business and software development processes of intrapreneurial software development organization.• Technical leader, translating customer and marketing requirements into engineering specifications. • Liaison to Motorola Software Factories implementing video compression software. • Technology Scout, conducting competitive product benchmarking.• Developed and deployed simplified Quality Assurance, Testing, and Software Configuration Management processes and tools to multiple software development organizations. • Developed and deployed Technology Transition (Change Management) Framework, improving productivity and quality in software project teams.• Led internal and external software organization Benchmarking Programs, chaired Software Development Best Practices symposium programs, promoting and deploying tailored software engineering methods (e.g., Technology Shelf, Object Oriented reuse, Fagan code inspections).• Ensured high-value selection of software start-up investments for New Enterprise's investment portfolio, assessing software technology novelty and robustness, • Developed, deployed, and monitored common Software Organizational Performance Metrics (e.g. quality, cost, estimation & planning.)

Chicago, Il, Us

Developed and deployed semi-automated software engineering practices for a 400-engineer private LAN telecommunications NPD team. • Assessed Software Engineering Institute organizational maturity (PMM/CMM) and drove organizational process and capability improvement. • Designed and deployed automated software Configuration Management (change control) process cited as Best Practice across Motorola.

Dallas, Tx, Us

• Technology futurist deriving 5-year software development process improvement roadmap to meet customer, quality, cost, and productivity goals:- Benchmarked external companies' software engineering processes and best practices (Hitachi, Toshiba, NEC corp., Florida Power and Light, Anderson Consulting).- Developed organizational processes for technology transfer and new technology development. • Manager & Lead software architect of Advanced Software Development Environment Group, Applied Research Laboratory: Used Human-Centered Design methods to prototype and deploy software engineering tools and environments for improved productivity, quality, and cycle time in large software development organizations (C++, Apollo workstations, Visual Editors & Browsers, Systems Dynamics, NLP, MBTI, Policy Deployment, Scenario Planning, House of Quality).• Developed Datagram (e.g., wire-line text) functionality of Bell Labs Network OSI Switching system Service Layer.

Master Of Science - Ms, Mathematics And Computer Science

Bachelor Of Science, Computer Science, Statistics