Thomas D. Kuczmarski is president and founder of the global consulting firm Kuczmarski Innovation and an internationally recognized expert in the innovation of new products and services. Over the course of his career he has helped hundreds of clients, ranging from small businesses to Fortune 100 corporations, learn to systematically unlock the value of innovation. Mr. Kuczmarski teaches creating and leading a culture of innovation at Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management where he is Senior Lecturer and Visiting Scholar in the Center for Innovation and Technology. For more than four decades, his executive education courses at the Kellogg School have attracted students from around the world.
Mr. Kuczmarski is co-founder with journalist Dan Miller, of Chicago Innovation, which annually educates, connects, and celebrates innovators in the Chicago region. The Chicago Innovation Awards are endorsed by every major business association in the Chicago region and showcase the creative spirit of America’s heartland. Since 2002, Chicago Innovation has grown in scope as well as size, with now over 40,000 people in the community, and programs spanning from connecting women with the Women Mentoring Co-op, and educating and celebrating children in the Illinois Student Invention Convention.
Mr. Kuczmarski is the author of nine books on innovation and leadership, including his most recent book, Risk-Free Innovation: 10 Ways to Manage Uncertainty (Book Ends Publishing, 2023). He has also published Lifting People Up, the Power of Recognition (Book Ends Publishing, 2018), Innovating Chicago Style: How Local Innovators are Building the National Economy (Book Ends Publishing, 2012), Apples Are Square: Thinking Differently about Leadership (Kaplan, 2007), Innovating the Corporation (NTC/Contemporary Publishing Group, 2001), Managing New Products (Book Ends Publishing, 2000), and Values-Based Leadership: Rebuilding Employee Commitment, Productivity and Performance (Prentice-Hall, 1995).
He is extensively published and cited on radio, television, and in national periodicals including a weekly Innovation Minute on WBBM Newsradio, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Newsweek, Bloomberg Business Week, The Today Show, Planning Review, Investor’s Business Daily, USA Today, Marketing News, Advertising Age, Crain’s Chicago Business, Business Marketing, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Chicago Tribune, and many more. He wrote the chapter on new products and services in the Marketing Encyclopedia, a publication of the American Marketing Association, and serves on the editorial review boards for The Journal of Product Innovation Management and The Journal of Consumer Marketing.
Mr. Kuczmarski is a highly regarded speaker on innovation management and leadership, and lectures nationally and internationally to a broad range of corporations and associations. He is the chairman of the Chicago Innovation advisory board, a member of the Economic Club of Chicago, trustee of the Retirement Research Foundation, and board member the Chicago Inventors Organization.
Before founding Kuczmarski Innovation, he was a Principal at Booz · Allen & Hamilton. While there, Mr. Kuczmarski assisted more than 100 U.S. consumer and industrial goods companies in the areas of marketing, new product development, strategic business analysis and organizational planning. In addition, he led the firm’s in-depth research of the best practices employed by more than 700 U.S. firms in their new product management processes. His prior experience as a brand manager at Quaker Oats Company provided a solid and broad-based foundation unique to his consulting specialty.
He earned an M.B.A. from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business, and holds a master’s degree in international affairs from Columbia University’s Graduate School of International and Public Affairs, where he was named an International Fellow of the University. He received a B.A. in French from the College of the Holy Cross.