David Ross

David Ross is a strategic innovation leader and entrepreneur with over twenty years of complex engagement management and entrepreneurial experience. David is an expert in the creation and implementation of innovation based initiatives and has global experience in the pharmaceutical, healthcare, consulting, information and mobile technology services industries.

David’s passion is the creation and implementation of innovation based initiatives throughout the enterprise. He does not just understand the processes of ideation, but possesses the skills necessary to craft and execute innovation or intrapreneurial strategies within the boundaries of the corporate culture.

During the course of his career, David has been a builder of technology-based businesses. He has leveraged his unique combination of business understanding, engineering, software development and technology to deliver innovative solutions with positive results.

Recently David has been tapped to work on cutting-edge projects within the Pharmaceutical and Health Care industry. He uses his background as an entrepreneur, innovator and successful implementer to help these organizations craft and deploy new business models and strategies to create discontinuous and disruptive innovation enabling the organizations to look beyond what is in front of them.


International Experience:
North America: Canada, United States
Latin America: Brazil, Argentina
Europe: Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Ireland, The Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, UK
Asia: India, Russia, Thailand
Africa: Kenya, Seria Leon, South Africa
Oceania: Australia, New Zealand

1. Start-ups
2. Business Development
3. Business Strategy
4. Project Management
5. Negotiation
6. Strategic Partnerships
7. Entrepreneurship
8. Entrepreneur
9. Venture Capital
10. Corporate Development
11. Strategy
12. SaaS

• How Sponsors Evaluate Opportunities

  • September 18, 2009
  Authors: David Ross

  The surest way to win great sponsors for your event is to understand the criteria they use when evaluating pitches from organizers like you. What are your sponsors hoping to achieve, and how will your opportunity help them achieve it? There are six Critical Criteria to keep in mind. First, most sponsor probably have a Communication Objective. Try to understand the message their company is trying to send. Next you must consider the Target Market they’re aiming for and make sure your event is a good match. Third, consider the Risks your sponsor might be taking in signing with you and try to mitigate against those risks. Your sponsor is also probably looking for Promotional Opportunities. Have you provided creative ways for them to promote and sell their products and services at your venue? Your Past Record is a fifth important criterion. Lastly, you sponsor wants to be sure there’s an appropriate ROI (Return on Investment) for the dollars they spend. Satisfy these six Critical Criteria and you’ll top the list of “suitors” trying to win a “date” with the attractive sponsor.

• What Is Sponsorship? – The Four Key Components

  • February 1, 2009
  Authors: David Ross

  Great sponsors can make or break a sporting event. They provide the organizers with a host of benefits, such as money, products and services, as well as prestige and other intangibles. But many event producers have only a vague understanding of the nature of sponsorship. By thoroughly absorbing the author’s four-part definition of sponsorship, event organizers are much more likely to attract and keep great sponsors. That definition focuses on creating a mutually advantageous business relationship that brings tangible and measurable results to the sponsor. The key to wooing great sponsors is to focus on the great benefits your event can bring to them.

• Fulfillment: the Forgotten Art

  • March 2, 2009
  Authors: David Ross

  Often event organizers invest so much energy in landing sponsors for their events that they don’t pay as much attention to the “back end” of the sponsorship deal. That is, the Fulfillment stage. Fulfillment, the forgotten art, is all about delivering on those promises you made during the pitching and proposal phases. Fulfillment is the payoff you furnish the sponsor. It is arguably the most important part of the process, because if you deliver great results, you’ll not only build a great relationship with your current sponsor, you’ll be able to attract future sponsors. One major key to successful Fulfillment is to manage your sponsor’s expectations, right from the start. Are you both on the same page? Other important considerations are professionalism, good communications and excellent relationship management all the way through the process. Perhaps the most important aspect of Fulfillment is that you need to agree on tangible, measurable results and then demonstrate to your sponsor, in concrete terms, that you have delivered the goods. Do the Fulfillment stage right and you’ll have sponsors knocking on your door.

• The Importance of Social Media for Event Organizers

  • April 1, 2009
  Authors: David Ross

  The marketing methods of yesteryear are losing their grip. In today’s wired world, if you want to reach the target demographic for your sporting event, you need to include online social media in your marketing strategies. Social media allow you to connect in a personal and individualized way with your audience. Social media encourage two-way conversation and offer a limitless range of creative opportunities for both gathering information and getting the word out about your event. Social media include blogs, micro-blogs, Social Network Sites (SNS), wikis, forums and media sharing sites such as YouTube. All of them have unique benefits to offer if you make the effort to explore them.

• Creating a Social Media Strategy

  • April 30, 2009
  Authors: David Ross

  Social media are a vital resource for promoting sporting events in the 21st Century. When you’re creating your social media strategy, it helps to follow a step-by-step plan. It begins by setting a handful of specific and manageable goals. Then you must get to know your market. What are the online habits of your target audience? Once you know this, you can choose your “weapons” – which social media will give you the best access to your target group. After deciding whether you should build your own site or leverage an existing one, develop a long-term commitment. As you implement your marketing plan, look for ways to leverage technology to make your job easier. Finally, keep the Four C’s (Content, Context, Connection and Community) in mind.

• Know Your Audience’s “Social Technographic Profile”

  • June 2, 2009
  Authors: David Ross

  The term “demographics” is familiar to anyone who has run a marketing campaign. Every marketing effort, in order to be successful, must reach its target audience. But in today’s wired age, as online social media become more and more central to our marketing approach, we may need to look at a new set of criteria. The term “Social Technographic Profile,” coined by the authors of the book Groundswell, describes a person’s personality and characteristics as it relates specifically to social media. Only by knowing the online tendencies of our target audience will we know which social media to emphasize in our marketing strategies and what approaches to use. The main Social Technographic Profiles are Creator, Critic, Joiner, Spectator and Inactive.

• The Sponsorship Process: a Life Circle

  • July 30, 2009
  Authors: David Ross

  Event organizers need to understand that the art of winning great sponsors is a process, which, like the cycle of life, goes through several distinct stages. Knowing what to expect and what is expected of you during each of these stages is essential to success. The Identify stage is about selecting the ideal sponsor to approach. The Recruit stage involves crafting a great proposal that will sell you convincingly to the sponsor. In the Evaluate stage, the sponsor considers your pitch and decides whether he wants to work with you. Finally, the “life cycle” culminates in the Fulfill stage, where you have signed the sponsor and now must deliver on what you promised. If you do you job properly, you will create a veritable “circle of life,” in which you and the sponsor will happily repeat the sponsorship cycle many times over, into the future.

• How Sponsors Evaluate Opportunities

  • September 18, 2009
  Authors: David Ross

  The surest way to win great sponsors for your event is to understand the criteria they use when evaluating pitches from organizers like you. What are your sponsors hoping to achieve, and how will your opportunity help them achieve it? There are six Critical Criteria to keep in mind. First, most sponsor probably have a Communication Objective. Try to understand the message their company is trying to send. Next you must consider the Target Market they’re aiming for and make sure your event is a good match. Third, consider the Risks your sponsor might be taking in signing with you and try to mitigate against those risks. Your sponsor is also probably looking for Promotional Opportunities. Have you provided creative ways for them to promote and sell their products and services at your venue? Your Past Record is a fifth important criterion. Lastly, you sponsor wants to be sure there’s an appropriate ROI (Return on Investment) for the dollars they spend. Satisfy these six Critical Criteria and you’ll top the list of “suitors” trying to win a “date” with the attractive sponsor.

• Path/Goal Problem - The Funnel Framework Part 1 Introduction

  • July 17, 2011
  Authors: David Ross

  Abstract: All companies have goals or targets as well as projections for various metrics. The problem is that external and internal environment factors more often than not push a company off course. We call this tendency for a company to stray from the optimal projected path the Path/Goal problem. In the course of this paper we will construct a framework for representing and quantifying the relationship between a company’s goals and their current position and path. Furthermore we will discuss and quantify when a course change should be considered as well as the nature of the distribution of possible outcomes at any given point in time. We will then proceed to use our framework to contrast incremental and discontinuous innovation and how this relates to a companies path toward a goal.

• Path/Goal Problem – Part 2 Comparing Agility

  • July 17, 2011
  Authors: David Ross

  Comparing Agility
  Course changes need to occur for a number of reasons, notably because of the dynamic shifts within the external and internal environment, or to improve the rate of travel toward the goal. Thus, the ability of a firm to effectively respond to dynamic shifts by changing paths lends credibility towards the conception that organizational agility is paramount in creating competitive advantages, particularly ones that leverage technological innovation. There is considerable evidence produced through research asserting that a linkage exists between the agility and the competitiveness of an organization (Thomke, 1997). Organizational agility, or the degree of flexibility and nimbleness in responding to environmental change, is portrayed in organizations through the execution of path changes. A change in path, or operational modulation, is the process of changing the directional course towards reaching the end goal in response to environmental changes (Nickerson and Zenger, 2002). Moreover, organizational agility plays a pivotal role in how effective organizations are modulating....

• Path/Goal Problem – Part 3 Types of Innovation

  • July 17, 2011
  Authors: David Ross

  Types of Innovation and their relationship to ζ
  Macher and Richman (2004) offer a broadened explanation for anomalous performance among some incumbent firms in the wake of technology innovation. Macher and Richman (2004) state that successful incumbent performance in the wake technology innovations is the result of discontinuous innovation, which is generalized in literature to encompass two types of change, one being radical and the other being architectural. However, Macher and Richman (2004), argue that discontinuous innovation “unsurprisingly contrasts with “incremental innovation” or “sustaining innovation”, which typically introduces relatively minor changes to existing products, exploits the potential of established designs, and reinforces the dominance and capabilities of incumbent firms” (p. 4). Paralleled with Hill and Rothaermel’s (2003) definition of radical innovation, Macher and Richman (2004) say that “radical innovation requires knowledge that is usually based on engineering and scientific principles that are unfamiliar to incumbent firm” (p. 4). Whereas, architectural innovation leaves the core components of a system untouched, while connecting individual pieces of technology together as a way of reengineering a system or a process that is supported by a set of core components (Macher & Richman, 2004)....

• Path/Goal Problem – Part 4 Course Correction

  • July 17, 2011
  Authors: David Ross

  Course Corrections
  Based on this framework, the optimal time for a course correction remains a critical inquiry. However, before this inquiry can be addressed, the cost associated with a course correction must be calculated, or at least reasonably estimated. In actuality there are many small costs that must be considered in aggregate for a course correction. For example, retooling or changing the configuration in a production facility represents a large change, and probably a relatively large aggregate cost will be associated with that change. Other changes like product positioning, marketing or new product creation will have very different costs.
  While the reality of course correction costs exists, the type of costs and their respective amounts are relative to each individual company and their industry among many other factors. Course correction costs impact the decision making process that occurs in response to evaluating and estimating environmental risks and uncertainties. If the expected benefit yielded from taking a particular course change is greater than the costs then the change should be perused, and will be discussed in more depth later in this section. This relationship between cost and the benefit will define the optimal time for evaluation of a course correction....

• Path/Goal Problem – Part 5 Strategies

  • July 17, 2011
  Authors: David Ross

  Strategies
  While there are an infinite numbers of potential strategies I am going to focus on the two extremes in the incremental innovation situation and then the discontinuous situation. The first on the incremental side is where a company tries to hit their goal with the minimum number of course changes (one). To use a nautical term this is called “Banging the Corner”.
  
  “Bang the corner — to sail all the way to or beyond the lateral extent of the racecourse (where the extended laylines from the weather mark and leeward mark cross) in search of a (usually mythical) strategic advantage. Banging the corner eliminates any advantages possible from wind shifts; lifts are no help to you and headers help every other boat but yours. Also called “going to Cornersville,” “Rightsville,” or “Leftsville,” where the population is usually 1. British and Commonwealth sailors call it “ringing the bell.” See also: overstand.”(Reference: http://www.sailorspeak.com/2010/12/14/bang-the-corner/)
  
  As stated in the definition this strategy has a couple of week points. First, it maximizes the risk of being on the wrong side of a shift in conditions. This means that if a shift occurs you will either gain a huge advantage or loss. Since most companies are not gamblers by nature this is a very unattractive and risky way to proceed...

• ENTREPRENEURS-IN-RESIDENCE PROGRAM ANNOUNCED AT GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY’S MCDONOUGH SCHOOL OF BUSINESS

  • October 4, 2011
  Authors: David Ross

  Seasoned Entrepreneurs to Provide Mentorship to Georgetown Students
  
  Washington, D.C. – A new Entrepreneurs-in-Residence Program at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business will enhance the school’s growing Entrepreneurship Initiative across undergraduate and graduate programs university-wide.
  
  “By providing our students access to these experienced professionals, the Entrepreneurship Initiative continues to grow meaningful connections between the vibrant entrepreneurship community in the Washington region and a new generation of budding self-starters,” said Jeff Reid, director of the Georgetown Entrepreneurship Initiative.
  
  The inaugural Entrepreneurs-in-Residence include Timothy P. Keenan, president and chairman of the board, High Performance Technologies Inc.; Alyssa Lovegrove, CEO and founder, New Venture Mentors; David Ross, health care innovation consultant, Janssen Johnson & Johnson; T. Richard Stroupe Jr., founder and managing principal, Crimson Holdings LLC; and Susan Wilson, founder and CEO of FundHer.

• Continuously compensating bicycle suspension system

  • United States Patent 5,921,572
  • Issued July 13, 1999
  Inventors: David Ross

  An electronically controlled suspension apparatus is provided for manipulating the spring constant of a bicycle rear wheel suspension system. The suspension apparatus includes a gas shock absorber connected to an external fluid chamber via a discharge loop and a return loop. The two loops control the volume of gas in communication between the shock absorber and the fluid chamber. The discharge loop includes a fluid control valve and a flow rate control valve. The return loop includes an one-way check valve and a flow rate control valve. The present invention also includes a sensor for measuring terrain induced accelerations of the rear wheel and an electronic circuit for operating the fluid control valve.

Websites:

• Twitter
• Blog

Interests:

Innovation, Tech, Alternative Energy, Sailing, Biking, Delta Upsilon, Raider USA 52201, Hun School, Delta Upsilon, CMU, CBYRA, Chesapeake Bay Yacht Racing Association, AYC, Annapolis Yacht Club, S&S, Lanakila, Bass Fishing, Curling, Sailing, Walleye, Cycling, Triathlon, Volleyball, Marathon, Windsurfing, Kiteboarding, Karting, Swimming, Rowing, Fencing, Skateboarding, Shooting

Groups and Associations:

• 
  American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE) Official Group
• 
  Annapolis Yacht Club (AYC)
• 
  Board of Innovation
• 
  CEO Network -- the source for Chief Executives
• 
  Camp Lanakila
• 
  Carnegie Mellon Alumni
• 
  Carnegie Mellon Alumni Association - CMU Group
• 
  Carnegie Mellon Startups
• 
  Digital Health
• 
  Disruptive Innovation
• 
  ESADE Business School Global MBA Network
• 
  European Innovators
• 
  Future Trends
• 
  Georgetown ESADE Global Executive MBA
• 
  Georgetown University McDonough School of Business Alumni
• 
  Healthcare Executives Network
• 
  Healthcare Informatics' CIO Connection
• 
  Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society
• 
  Herreshoff Marine Museum / America's Cup Hall of Fame
• 
  Innovation Forum group
• 
  Johnson and Johnson's Alumni Group
• 
  Linked CEO
• 
  MindShare Alumni
• 
  Smarter Healthcare
• 
  The Hun School of Princeton Alumni Network
• 
  The Linked CXO / President, CEO, COO, CIO, CTO, MD, VP, Director 's