James R. Ferry

President of Boston Innovation Group (B.I.G.), Jim Ferry has 20 years of line and management consulting experience. He earned his B.S. degree from the University of Illinois and his MBA from the Kellogg School at Northwestern University.

For ten years Jim was a guest lecturer at the Harvard Business School’s course on “Entrepreneurship, Creativity, and the Organization.” He currently lectures in the New Product Development course at the Yale School of Organization and Management and in the Qualitative Methods course at the Sloan School of Management at MIT.

He has been a Fellow to the International Design Conference at Aspen and he has also lectured at the Yale School of Organization and Management, the Design Management Institute, Ad Age Creative Workshop, and at numerous business conferences.

As the force behind BIG, Jim facilitates:

• Idea Generation Sessions,
• Qualitative Research,
• Innovation Process Improvements, and
• Organizational Change.


His clients include Internet, telecommunications, medical device, pharmaceutical, financial service, food, publishing and manufacturing corporations.


BIG Client Services:

Qualitative Research
Focus Groups
In-Depth Interviews
Guerilla Research

Facilitation
Idea Generation
Positioning
Naming
Consensus Building
Vision
Organizational Development
Strategic Direction

Training
Teamwork and Innovation
Dealing with Difficult People
Facilitator Training

Typical assignments have included:

• Facilitating a cross-functional team to develop a new product for a medical products company. The product was launched worldwide and has far exceeded sales and profitability estimates. The work won a quality award from the company and an international design award.

• Improving the new product development process by adopting best practices learned from visiting companies such as Nike, Microsoft, Rubbermaid, and others. New products now account for nearly 50% of sales, versus 10% previously.

• Moderating focus groups with physicians and other medical professionals to explore improvements in asthma control devices.

• Facilitating a major change effort at a manufacturing company that in 1994 ranked last in its industry on five key indicators. The company is now in the top quartile in North America.