Commercializing Innovation to Drive Growth
Most small-cap and mid-cap companies were once highly innovative and disruptive companies enjoying reliable double-digit growth.
For a variety of reasons, including the recent global recession, many of these companies now are seeing their rates of growth decline into single digits or even negative growth.
There are many dimensions to turning around declining growth, including marketing, regulatory, financial, human resources and technology. But here we focus on driving growth through re-establishing innovation in small-cap and mid-cap companies.
There are two widely-practiced approaches: developing innovation internally to launch new products and services, and the most popular approach, buying innovation through mergers and acquisitions.
Yet one KPMG study showed that 83 percent of mergers and acquisitions did not increase shareholder returns. Another by A.T. Kearney showed overall negative shareholder returns on mergers and acquisitions. This topic shows small-cap and mid-cap companies how to improve these results.
About Bob
- Executive Director of the Nutrition Matters Foundation (Nutrimatters™), a non-profit under IRS section 501(c)(3) dedicated to a healthier future for everyone. Learn from new science how the body really works and the truth about food to achieve healthy long-term weight loss and well-being without medicines, supplements, or surgery.
- COO of Intake Health™ an innovator in professional sports and consumer athletics hydration monitoring. We are proud to be funded by both the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health, who have awarded us multiple prestigious grants for our cutting-edge work in health monitoring.
- COO and a Founding Partner for Final Surge® developers of the FinalSurge.com coaching and training platform and apps that empower some of the world's best coaches and athletes to reach fitness and performance excellence like never before.
- CEO and Founder of Best Thinking® and Thinker Books, an independent digital publishing and early competitor of Amazon Publishing. Mashable.com rated it as one of the top five best websites for publishers.
- COO and GM with P&L responsibility for practice management at the LexisNexis Group of Reed Elsevier, one of the world’s largest online publishers of scientific, medical, legal, and business journals and websites.
- CEO and Founder of Time Matters® Software, the most widely used and most award-winning law office information and document management systems in the U.S. legal market at the time of its acquisition by LexisNexis.
- 20-plus years in virtually every leadership position in high-tech innovation, from startups to global companies, including building and successfully exiting his own startup (Time Matters®), nurturing startups in his accelerator (TechStarts+), venture investing, and driving strategy and numerous acquisitions for a major innovation initiative at a large global company.
- Testified before Congress on carbon-neutral renewable liquid fuels, participated in White House meetings with the VP on economic development, and was quoted in the Wall Street Journal on Internet taxation. Economic Development Consultant for the Technical Assistance Division for the U.S. Economic Development Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce.
- IRONMAN® Certified Coach. Qualifier for the 2021, 2022, and 2023 USAT Age Group Sprint Triathlon Nationals Championships. Commercial Pilot - Instrument Multi-Engine Land, Single Engine Sea.
Experience
- Developing a breakthrough curriculum to educate about the new science of how the body really works to achieve permanent weight loss and well-being without medicines, supplements, or surgery. A huge body of new scientific research is changing almost everything everyone knows about nutrition. Unfortunately, the National Institutes of Health has determined it takes an average of 17 years for new proven research to be put into practice.
- The National Center for Health Statistics reports that nearly eight million Americans die or are hospitalized yearly due to obesity-related metabolic diseases. Eight million deaths and hospitalizations yearly for 17 years is 136 million obesity-related metabolic disease casualties while waiting for this new research to be put into practice.
- Nutrimatters is dedicated to significantly shortening this 17-year time frame by translating this often complex, conflicting, and confusing new research into Actionable Knowledge. Actionable Knowledge is simplified information direct from the new research that anyone can use in their busy everyday lives to live well while avoiding obesity and metabolic disease.
Intake Health™ is an innovator in professional sports and consumer athletics hydration monitoring. Our patent-pending technology uses urine electrical conductivity to report hydration status instantly without sample cups or dipsticks. We are proud to be funded by the top science innovation organizations in the USA. Both the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health have awarded us multiple prestigious grants for our cutting-edge work in health monitoring.
- FinalSurge.com® is the training and coaching platform and apps that empower athletes and coaches to reach fitness and performance excellence like never before. The Final Surge App makes it so easy to track workouts… that workouts actually get tracked. And the workout tracking contains the detailed data needed to optimize training to get maximum results without injury.
- Ideal for runners, cyclists, and multi-sports athletes and coaches in sports like triathlon, duathlon, Xterra and more. Final Surge is used around the world by athletes and teams of many sports where performing your best is what it’s all about.
Best Thinking combines digital media, Internet technology, and specialized business practices to commercialize innovation.
Publishes expert blogs and articles on breakthrough thinking. Mashable.com rated it as one of the top five best websites for publishers.
Under the brand ThinkerBooks, Best Thinking publishes e-books from a pool of more than 1,100 writers and researchers. The writer pool includes Pulitzer Prize winners and New York Times bestsellers; the majority have PhDs, MDs, and other advanced degrees.
Best Thinking also develops and provides technology for the direct monetization of content, automated e-book production, publishing platforms, and internet-based identity verification.
TechStarts+ is a startup accelerator specializing in technology ventures seeking to shorten the time and investment required to reach sustaining revenue, thereby minimizing the dilution of founder equity. TechStarts+ was a pioneer in the accelerator approach. At the time, most were using the incubator model that focused on early seed rounds and VC funding.
Several TechStarts+ startups have done extremely well, including Intake.Health and RoyaltyExchange.com.
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P&L responsibility for practice management, one of the four cornerstones of the LexisNexis business.
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Provided primary leadership in creation and execution of Total Practice Advantage, a software and cloud-based platform delivering a broad base of LexisNexis new and existing products.
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Driving force in creating and executing a companywide innovation strategy comprised of more than a dozen internal initiatives and acquisitions.
A classic startup success story, founded with little more than an idea to modernize the business side of the practice of law, Time Matters became the most widely used and most award-winning information and document management systems in the U.S. legal market at the time of its acquisition.
After a 4-year close working relationship, LexisNexis acquired Time Matters in 2004.
Education
Licenses & Certifications
Awards
- Andrew W. Mellon grant recipient for Alternative Energy Technology Development.
Boards
- Appointed by the Minnesota Governor to the University of Minnesota Biotechnology Advisory Board.
Committees
- Co-Chair, City of Cary Economic Development Commission 1998-2004
Panels
- Panel Moderator on Social Media, Internet Summit '09
- Panel Member, World Bio Energy Conference in Atlanta
Academia
- Taught managerial economics in the Executive MBA program at the University of St. Thomas Graduate School of Business in St. Paul, Minn.
Publications
- Holds 2 U.S. patents for producing renewable liquid motor fuels from carbon-neutral biomass.