NEW GrowTH
through
DESIGN THINKING
TBD Innovation helps companies innovate and create
New Products, New Services, and New Businesses.
We unlock the potential of TECHNOLOGY
to create new value for BUSINESS
through human-centered DESIGN
We help ESTABLISHED organizations and brands create new offerings, manage innovation portfolios, and build a culture of innovation.
We advise early-stage tech-oriented STARTUPS as they apply technology to satisfy real human needs, and create new brands and businesses.
bringing new capabilities into the world by pushing the boundaries of TECHNOLOGY
innovating revenue models & brands to create strategic value for BUSINESS
creating remarkable products & experiences through human-centered DESIGN
We believe in collaborating with smart, nice, and ambitious people who want to change the world.
We believe in purpose-driven organizations, and “starting with why.” By looking inward, understanding our values, and articulating the purpose of our brand, we give direction and inspiration to our organizations.
We believe that, as design professionals, we only create value when we make another person’s life better in some way. Then we can go about creating an innovative business to capture that value.
We believe that the principles of Design Thinking are life values: self-awareness, observation, empathy, creativity, analysis, synthesis, prototyping, experimentation, iteration, and improvement.
Rise Gardens
Rise Gardens is bringing the beauty and healthiness of fresh produce into people’s homes. TBDI designed their modular, smart, connected hydroponic garden to be easy to set up and a delight to use. The team provided research, ID, Engineering, UX, instruction design, and even named the company.
Lilly
Lilly had a pipeline of monoclonal antibody therapies intended to be self-injected by patients, and Craig’s team worked to deeply understand user needs and technical feasibility, and create a highly manufacturable, easy-to-use family of automatic devices, including that used for Trulicity today.
Outerwall
Before it was renamed Outerwall, with Coinstar and Redbox as the anchor businesses, this company funded and guided seven internal “startups.” Craig advised the individual Venture GMs to innovate and grow their businesses, and provided a portfolio management strategy to the company.
Noodles & Company
By studying real customers and employees, the TBDI team created a journey map full of opportunities – products, environments, app features, and service - to improve the experience of ordering, picking up, and dining off-premise, creating a remarkable “Noodles ToGo Experience.”
Noodles & Company
As part of the new Noodles ToGo Experience, the TBDI team evaluated all of the physical constraints (including ADA regulations and human factors), and designed an attractive terraced fixture to hold and display ToGo orders. The result was enhanced store capacity, efficiency and customer delight.
Brunswick
Brunswick is a world leader in recreational boating. Craig provided advice on a range of new product initiatives, helped develop a Design Thinking Training Program, and co-led a number of Design Thinking training sessions with senior leaders across business units.
Pensam Residential
Pensam is a real estate developer seeking to create a remarkable new active adult living experience. The TBDI team articulated Pensam’s values, gleaned real-world insights, and created design principles and concepts to guide the architects and managers of a new residential community in Denver.
Pensam Residential
Building on the values and design principles established when designing the resident experience, the TBDI team identified the new brand name and created the visual identity to represent the aspirations for this new active adult community: Airie Denver will open in 2020.
Lilly
Working directly with scientists and engineers, the TBDI team helped create a vision for future pharma development work which is more collaborative and innovative. The team established guiding principles and design concepts that guided the creation of this recently-opened state of the art Laboratory and Innovation Hub.
Pyrex
Innovating within an existing brand requires deep understanding of the brand values, respecting history while forging the future. Craig oversaw the team that redesigned this icon of American kitchens, bringing a remarkable read-from-above shape and bold easy-to-read graphics.
Digital Check
With its core paper check scanner business facing eventual decline, Digital Check engaged TBD Innovation to engage the company’s leaders, articulate core values and capabilities, and collaboratively envision future products and businesses for diversification.
Corningware
Sometimes technical innovation requires a fresh look at established capabilities. By adapting the proprietary multilayer glass manufacturing process of Corelle dinnerware, Craig’s team was able to create a new class of bakeware which was remarkably light, durable, and easy to clean, growing the category.
Life Fitness
Life Fitness launched InMovement as an internally incubated startup focused on movement and health in the workplace. Craig was an innovation advisor to the founders, and contributor to one of the flagship product concepts.
ST Imaging
The engineers at ST Imaging developed a new camera module with advanced imaging capabilities, and were seeking new growth areas. The TBDI team studied trends in technology, markets, and users, and identified a range of products and markets representing growth opportunities.
Leo Burnett
Craig was Co-founder and Senior Fellow for Farmhouse, the innovation center which created new products and services for major consumer brands, using “Story Driven Design” to interweave this innovation offering with the remarkable consumer brand marketing for which Leo Burnett is famous.
P&G
Details matter. Early in Craig’s career he designed and engineered the clean, easy-to-use snap cap for this remarkable toothpaste package for Procter and Gamble, of which over 1 billion have been produced.
Northwestern University
At Northwestern’s Segal Design Institute, Craig created and now teaches Designing Product Interactions, which is an experimental course combining multi-sensory perception and mechatronic engineering design to explore this new experiential frontier. DPI asks, “How do you feel?”
Northwestern University
At Northwestern’s Segal Design Institute, Craig mentors individual graduate students on their thesis projects, and advises MBA+Design student teams on business innovation challenges with corporate sponsors.
World Kitchen
Craig conceived and launched an annual open design competition, receiving hundreds of submissions from around the world which were juried by leading designers.
As founder and principal consultant of TBD Innovation, Craig works with a network of collaborators to help leaders understand important changes in technologies and human behaviors, and then envision and bring new futures to life.
Craig was a leader and founder at IDEO, and today he inspires leaders see the big picture, and make connections across departments, domains, and industries. Craig helps others think better – about themselves, their organization, and the future.
In addition to leadership skills, Craig’s expertise includes:
Have you ever pushed a door you were meant to pull? It’s not your fault. It’s the door’s. Human-centered designer Craig Sampson shares how objects “speak” to us and teaches us what we can do to listen.
We’d love to hear from you about your innovation goals.
initiate@tbdinnovation.com.