When Ma Bell was deregulated in 1988, it didn't take long for MCI and Sprint to begin eating their lunch. With AT&T's market share rapidly dwindling, their senior leaders reached out to us for help on two fronts:  1) Facilitate a series of brainstorming sessions to win back lost customers and;  2) Teach their trainers how to lead creative thinking sessions for a workforce that needed to become entrepreneurial in a hurry. The result? "The ideas developed in your sessions will guide our development for years to come."

Atlanticare, a 5,000 person health care conglomerate was committed to winning the Baldridge Award - the award given to the best run companies in the America. When they reviewed the application and noted 26 references to "innovation" for which they had no answer, they contacted us to help them build the core competency of innovation, including teaching 12 of their change agents how to lead breakthrough ideation sessions. Eighteen months later, President Obama was presenting them the award at the White House.

How much time have you spent studying the treads on your tires? Not much, we're guessing. Not so for the 200 members of Goodyear's R&D department. But sales were down, the pipeline was clogged, and morale was flat. That's when they brought us in to lead a series of innovation-sparking sessions and teach their professional development manager how to internalize our creative thinking tools and techniques. The result? Over 250 "big idea" projects were initiated resulting in new revenues totaling in the millions.

The year was 2005 and A&E Television was looking for a big breakthrough in their programming. That's when they called us in to design and facilitate a day long ideation session for a cross section of their movers and shakers. The result? Badaboom, badabing -  the idea to syndicate the Sopranos - a bold, $250 million bet that not only turned heads, but turned their company around.

General Mills does not mess around. When they declare a new product development goal, they really go for it - as in creating a new kind of salty snack food that would yield $250 million in yearly revenues. That's when they brought us in on two fronts - to lead a two-day product development session and to engage our own, outsourced BrainTrust to generate game-changing ideas. Mission accomplished. By General Mills' own assessment, our intervention was 50% responsible for the creation of Wahoos! - a salty snack food they launched in 2003.