Alan
founded Strategic Innovation Group LLC in 2007 to help companies develop capabilities to accelerate and improve their profitable growth.
Alan retired in 2008 from Energizer Battery Inc. as Senior Manager in Strategic Planning and New Business Development. Since 2008, he has worked successfully with a variety of Connecticut and multinational corporations to improve their business. In 2015 and 2016, he contracted with the University of Connecticut to build industry partnership with their STEM faculty research.
In his 33 years at Energizer, he has:
- Led activities in continuous improvement, Lean processes (including manufacturing) and 6 Sigma quality enhancement for two decades. He reshaped the development and manufacturing organizations to enable efficient customer focused global product development and implementation across 4 continents and 9 facilities within Energizer. Through his leadership, productivity soared and new products were launched far ahead of the competition with significant gains in quality for the multi-billion batteries sold each year.
- Championed and facilitated the innovation process within Energizer, providing guidance and expertise to the Innovation Council and the Product and Technology Planning Teams for each strategic business unit. His leadership helped establish long-term product and technology strategic plans resulting in significant growth and profitability despite fierce competition in the overall retail category
- Alan converted typically adversarial supplier relationships into supplier partnerships and alliances, where these suppliers would help advance Energizer’s product improvements through new material development and share in the benefits of success, while we helped them improve their quality and drive sustainable cost reductions.
- Organized, established and executed an on-going program, acquiring from the federal government multi-million dollar R&D contracts that were closely aligned with Energizer’s commercial / dual-use strategy.
- Led all phases of R&D from the fuzzy front end through high speed manufacturing and global implementation of new and enhanced consumer products.
In 2016, he was the primary author on a peer reviewed paper about how corporations can leverage the capabilities of freelance talent to advance their innovation and lower risks for their organization. This was a product of the Industrial Research Institute’s (IRI) 2038 Foresight Project.
From 2004 through 2006 at the IRI, Alan chaired the Research-on-Research Committee, which develops leading-edge practices, tools, and techniques to improve technological innovation in industry. In addition, Alan chaired the Subcommittee for Radical Innovation for 6 years in cooperation with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Babson College, and Rochester Institute of Technology that led to a new book, Grabbing Lightning: Building a Capability for Breakthrough Innovation.
Alan holds a BS in Chemistry from St. Lawrence University and an MBA with Honors from Baldwin Wallace College. He moved to Glastonbury, Connecticut in 2007.
