Mark Wilson

Bio

Founder of Initiatives; an outsourced new product development company that has been creating and implementing medical devices since 1994. Founder of Neworks rapid-fire technology commercialization workshops which include the Pre-Seed Workshop—an intense company-building accelerator that has been the spark for over 150 new technology-based companies since 2004. Formerly 12-years with Baxter Healthcare and Bausch & Lomb in engineering and management roles that launched new medical device and pharmaceutical platforms now totaling over $1B in annual revenues.

Teaching Interests

Innovation Management. Entrepreneurship.

Research Interests

Wilson is passionate that the concept-stage of innovation can be mechanized to greatly improve its currently discouraging statistics. Venture capital, best-demonstrated practice in early-stage diligence, is considered successful with a seventy-percent failure rate; and the bulk of this investing occurs after companies are far beyond concepts. With hands-on involvement in both corporate R&D and start-up companies, Wilson sees obvious parallels at the concept-stage between entrepreneurship and corporate new product development that have not been exploited and are in fact often scorned. Most notably, entrepreneurs do not deploy proven NPD tools; and in any setting where innovation is failing, a disciplined “Idea Thickening” approach is lacking. Wilson has on-going research into what he terms the “Pre-Seed Health Scorecard”—seeking a collection of objective indicators that can forecast whether a startup company is on the right track for success. In aggregate, these metrics signal the pre-seed health of a region. Wilson has conducted market and competitive research, recommended pricing strategies and business models, directed sales training and business development endeavors, and been commissioned for hundreds of conceptual sketches, cartoons, video storyboards and marketing collateral.

Education

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute - 1984

MS

Mechanical Engineering