I’ve spent the past 30 years as a technologist, inventor and trainer of systematic innovation for Procter & Gamble, but also in the unusual role of being a corporate cartoonist . Being both a divergent artist and a convergent scientist is perhaps a non-typical mix, but it's a powerful one that allows me to tap both sides of the brain to great advantage. Having spent the past 30 years in the field of new product development, I’ve come to realize that like most journeys in life, it isn’t always the destination that’s important, but rather the knowledge that one gains along the way.  Studies have shown that 90% of all communication is non-verbal, so all those written consumer concept tests we rely so heavily upon for our insights barely scratch the surface of understanding consumer's deep seated emotional needs.  Yet it turns out that cartoons are an excellent reflection of consumer emotional states.

While some may dismiss sketches and cartoons as "not serious", we found them to be an excellent vehicle for capturing and communicating extreme emotional conditions; using simple cartoons as powerful metaphors and analogies for capturing consumer’s deep-seated  emotional frustrations (their reality) and their ultimate ideal final result (their ideality).  Interestingly, those two extremes just happen to benchmark the opportunity gap of your consumer's emotional  purchase experience. Understanding your consumer's core frustrations and ideality is a pretty darn important piece of the puzzle.

I've done a ton of cartooning and  technical illustrating for P&G and other corporate clients over the years and have had quite a few of my "simple sketches" ending up as the patent drawings on our USPTO patent applications.  It seems one picture truly is worth a thousand words after all.

Blending art and science together is a powerful means of effectively tapping both sides of the brain, combining the intuitive abstraction of the subconscious with the deductive reasoning of the linear left brain.  Simple visualization processes such as VizTriz can also transform complex word-bound methodologies such as classic Russian TRIZ into simpler to learn and apply visual systems for driving breakthrough innovation.