Profile
For over 36 years, Lanny Vincent has been involved—in a facilitating role—with the innovation e
fforts of major manufacturers and distributors in semiconductor-based, consumer electronics, consumer package goods, food products, forest products and sporting goods industries. Lanny is a student, teacher and coach of innovation management principles and practices. He facilitates invention workshops and innovation targeting for client companies with sustained commitments to STEM-intensive businesses and invention-based innovation.
Lanny's current practice involves him in facilitating, advising and coaching innovation sponsors, concentrating on innovating systems. His contributions to client assignments are typically in three practice areas: strategic invention, opportunity foresight, and innovating systems.
Prior to establishing Vincent & Associates in 1990, Lanny was a partner and general manager of Synectics, Inc., a creative problem solving and training firm. From 1981 to 1986 he was with Kimberly-Clark Corporation’s Innovation Management Group developing major product, materials and process innovations for their divisions worldwide and managing the Trends Project.
In addition to his direct experience, Lanny’s formal training includes innovation management systems, total quality principles of manufacturing, creative problem solving, systems theory of family therapy, and social forecasting methods. He holds a Masters degree (M. Div.) from Yale University and a B.A. from Davidson College, and prior to his career in innovation management, Lanny served two Presbyterian Churches as an ordained pastor.
Lanny collaborated with Bill Wilson and Dick Cheverton on the book The Maverick Way: Profiting From the Power of the Corporate Misfit (2000). He is the founder of the Mavericks Roundtable and the Innovation Practitioners Network, a network of veteran innovators each with over 20 years experience in practice of innovation management in established corporations. In 2005, his article “Innovation Midwives” was published in the Industrial Research Institute's Research-Technology Management journal. His book Prisoners of Hope: How Engineers (and Others) Get Lift for Innovating (Westbow Press, 2011), describes the intersection of faith and innovating.
Coincident with his consulting engagements, Lanny is currently teaching several courses related to innovation and entrepreneurship at the Santa Clara University School of Engineering, including a graduate seminar “Innovation, Design and Spirituality” and an undergraduate core course “Innovation Theology: An Introduction.” Two related books were released in 2016 and 2017: Innovation Theology: A Biblical Inquiry and Exploration and A Primer on Innovation Theology: Responding to Change in the Company of God, both by Wipf & Stock. See innovationtheology.org for more information.