FocusCatalyst

Guided Brainstorming for Innovators

FocusCatalyst Advisory Board

 
 

Michela Abrams, President and Publisher,

Dwell Media


With over 20 years experience in both consumer and high technology publishing, Michela Abrams has been CEO and publisher of four major magazines. She was president of Imagine Media's Business Division, including its flagship publication, Business 2.0. She has served as President and CEO of Computerworld, COO of Ziff-Davis Events and Publisher and Group Vice President at McGraw-Hill. Currently she is President and Publisher of Dwell, a lifestyle magazine featuring modern home interiors and exteriors.

Michela Abrams on FOCUS. The Catalyst for Innovation:  "Reinvents creative thinking in a way that brings about tangible results."

Michela Abrams on FocusCatalyst CustomCatalysts, "They are exceptionally good at getting inside a business' core focus and figuring out how to leverage that into a meaningful market positioning campaign."
 



Linda Hayes, Chief Operating Officer
FusionOne

Linda is the Chief Executive Officer of FusionOne, the leading developer of premium mobile content backup services that help people access, manage, and protect the information and applications on their mobile phones. These powerful turn-key service offerings include user-friendly mobile phone backup and restore, a dynamic address book solution that automatically updates itself, and an advanced wireless synchronization approach that brings “smartphone” functionality to everyday phones.  Linda was also the CEO of Vendio (formerly Andale), and Vice President of Marketing for Pretty Good Privacy (PGP). During her tenure with Novell Novell as head of worldwide marketing, Linda was the driving force behind the company's global branding and outbound communications efforts.

Linda Hayes on FocusCatalyst CustomCatalysts, "They represent a very different way of focusing on important issues for the organization. It fosters thoughtfulness, creativity and is energizing in and of itself."

 

Richard Adler, Futurist and President, DigiPlaces
Former Director, Institute for the Future

Richard Adler has been researching and working in new media businesses for over two decades. In the 1970's he was the television critic for the Wall Street Journal. For ten years after that he was a director at the Institute for the Future in Menlo Park, CA, where his clients included many Fortune 500 companies. A nationally recognized expert on the future of the senior market, Richard has taught communications at Stanford and UCLA and was a Research Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He has written extensively about new information technologies and their future implications, writing numerous reports for the Aspen Institute including The Future of Advertising and Jobs, Technology and the Future of Work.

Richard Adler FocusCatalyst CustomCatalysts: "Betsy Burroughs is incredibly skilled at developing processes that tap into peoples' creativity in powerful and practical ways.

"The kinds of experiences she organizes are both enjoyable and lead to surprising results that people would never have come to on their own--or would have taken them a lot longer to get to.

"I've seen the results of the FocusCatalyst CustomCatalyst work in projects Betsy has done for over a decade and I know it works."


David O'Connor, Business Consultant
Past President, Merle Norman Cosmetics, International


A business consultant with decades of experience in the beauty industry, David O'Connor has been the president and founder of two companies, Meritage Skin Care, Inc., and Visage Beaute Cosmetics, Inc., as well as initially the Vice President of Marketing and then President of Merle Norman Cosmetics, International. Merle Norman has been in business since 1939 with products marketed through 2,000 franchised independent stores bearing the name of the company.

David O'Connor on FOCUS. The Catalyst for Innovation, "A positively brilliant, yet practical, approach to those everyday challenges that beg to be done, but which we love to avoid. 

"I really became quite caught up in the concepts and techniques.  A truly refreshing adventure into the job of getting the devil out of the detail."

David O'Connor on FocusCatalyst CustomCatalysts: "They lead one to the exploration of ideas and concepts that one would never have considered without the dynamic of  its process.

"The entire activity seemed counterintuitive to me, but it actually works. It creates an imagination-expanding reality that surpasses all your expectations."


















 

The FocusCatalyst Advisory Board

Photos from FocusCatalyst Guided Brainstorming Walks. Favorite places for the Walks include:      Museums. Photo from an SF MOMA Walk. (And yes, those are tooth picks.)                                                  In Nature. Photo from a Tomales Bay Walk. University Campuses. Photo from a  FocusCatalyst Brainstorming Walk after a Stanford MediaX program at Stanford University.