The customer who'd helped develop the technology still wouldn't be the first to buy it.
Why I do this work
I've watched this happen more than once: a company pours millions into technology with real promise, engineers are convinced, leadership backs them, yet it fails in market adoption. Not because the technology was wrong. Because nobody stopped to ask whether customers would actually buy it, and when. In one case, even the customer who'd helped develop the technology wouldn't commit to being first. They trusted what they already had.
What was missing wasn't more technical validation — there was plenty of that. It was commercial validation: evidence that the market wanted this, at this price, on this timeline. Technical capability alone doesn't create demand. Market need, timing and a compelling commercial case determine whether innovation gets adopted. That gap between what's technically brilliant and what a market will actually adopt is where most technology investment can quickly go off track, and it's rarely visible until after the launch has already failed.
That's what this work is about. I'm drawn to brilliant technology, and the engineering minds that build it. I can see the potential too, and I hate watching it struggle or fail. What I bring is a different lens: knowing when that brilliance will matter to a customer, when it won't, and what the market actually needs. Turning brilliant technology into something the market adopts is the work that energizes me.
What clients actually experience
I embed directly in the business, doing the work alongside your team rather than advising from the outside. I learn the technology fast enough to speak its language, and I stay invested through execution, not just the strategy.
In practice, that means talking to the people doing the work before I design anything, building real tools instead of just a deck, and piloting the approach on real work, making any necessary refinements to ensure the strongest version gets embedded so it can be repeated. It also means doing cross-functional work so the whole organization moves together, committed to the outcomes.
25+ years
in the energy industry — Cameron, Schlumberger, Baker Hughes — working complex engineering, manufacturing and service technology markets across six continents.
01
Progress is evidence-based rather than calendar-driven, work moves forward when it's validated, so what we build holds after the engagement is complete.
02
Built a program that gave product leaders a credible, evidence-based way to justify or kill a technology investment before millions were spent developing it and taking it to market.