Our Approach

We are a management consulting firm that only works in areas where we have the deepest, most differentiated insights. We use a proven proprietary approach to strategy and innovation to help our clients get closer to their customers than they ever thought possible.

We are different from other firms for four key reasons:

We help our clients get closer to their customers than they ever thought possible.

Operate in the sweet spot between what you need most and what we know best using market leading insights.

Our approach is firmly rooted in the three fundamental realities on how innovation happens to help solve your toughest business challenges.

Amassed a universal Challenge Tree aligned to over 10,000 winning ideas across functions and industries.

Evidence from diverse fields of research support the three principles of strategy & innovation

Brain Science

Business Innovation

Cognitive Psychology

How does innovation happen?

Innovation is now the priority in the corporate world. Companies are pouring money, time, and effort into innovation. However, an innovation crisis exists.

Innovation is the creation of business value through the development & commercialization of new ideas.

Three “fundamental realities” explain how innovation actually happens:

01 Innovation is the result of “creative re-combination,” fueled by inspirations from unexpected places

02 Innovation begins with framing your critical challenge in new ways

03 Innovation cannot be delegated – those who own its implementation should be central to its generation

DELIVER

Our approach to innovation is proven to bring fresh ideas to life and bring new value to your projects:

01 FRAME

Strategic Innovation Challenge

01 perspectives

Customers
Staff
Executives
Partners
Opinion Leaders

02 FACTS

Market(S)
Business
Technology
Regulation
Etc.

03 PARAMETERS

Timeframe
Investment
Partners
Etc.

04 PRIORITIZATION

Degree Of Difficulty
Innovation Required
Size Of Challenge

Strategic Innovation Challenge

In FRAME, we discover your primary challenges and unlock a path to creative thinking

What We Do

02 CREATE

Breakthrough Ideas

01 Deconstruct

What elements must be solved in order to crack the innovation ?

02 Disassociate

How do we generalize each element of the challenge to enable broader, unconstrained thinking

03 search

Has anyone, anywhere, anytime, ever solved the piece of puzzle?

04 Filter

Which precedents offer the most promise for a breakthrough solution?

05 Recombine

What combination of which precedents would crack the challenge?

Breakthrough Ideas

In CREATE, we find strategic analogs to critical challenges to stimulate unconstrained inspiration for innovative solutions

What We Do

03 PRIME

Innovation Strategy & Conditions to Succeed

01 MARKET
SENSING

Size the growth
opportunity

02 CAPABILITY
FIT

Capability,
organizational
and portfolio
match

03 IDEA
DEVELOPMENT

Production

04 PILOT, LAUNCH,
LEARN

Go-to-market
execution and
monitoring

Innovation Strategy & Conditions to Succeed

In PRIME, we ground creative ideas to develop an action plan and drive immediate results in the market

What We Do

Create a business case by fine-tuning selected ideas from CREATE and fully developing strategic initiatives
Develop an implementation plan that is actionable, specific, and drives immediate market results
Design a pilot to quantify our earlier business case, build a launch sequence and measurement plan, and generate an in-depth implementation roadmap for each idea

03 innovation pocket guide

innovation pocket guide

1. Identify your most critical challenges

Identify the most critical challenges and opportunities that cannot be solved with conventional strategic planning and domain expertise

2. Invest in time to frame your challenge

Triple the time your teams spend thinking about how to frame the challenges that require innovative thinking. Include as many different functions and levels as possible. Look at it from as many different angles as possible. Seek novel framing.

3. Align your entire leadership team

Make sure your entire leadership team is aligned on the challenges/opportunities that require innovative solutions. Short cuts here will slow you down later.

4. Make your innovation process distinct

Separate the process for creating innovative solutions for your biggest challenges from the annual strategic planning process

5. Gather diverse precedents from your team

Ask your teams to think about anyone/anywhere/anytime who solved any part of your company’s challenge. This is the feedstock for productive brainstorming.

6. Focus on precedents before applicability

Focus on what you like about the strongest precedents first, and why; then transition to how to apply their insights to solve your target challenge

7. Beware the resistance to change

Beware the backslide! Most teams revert to what they know and what they already do, especially when it’s time to implement innovative ideas. Stay true to why these precedents won and ensure you include their insights in your implementation plans.

8. Live a diverse life

Live a diverse life. Diverse experiences fill your memory shelves with precedents that will spark A Ha! moments when you least expect and need them most

Our Clients

We only work in areas of our customers’ highest unmet needs with insights that can’t be uncovered conventionally.
We have successfully partnered with some of the world’s most iconic organizations and brands to solve their critical business challenges

Our Innovation Journey

1990-2006

Participated in many ideation brainstorming workshops didn’t focus enough on the challenge and lacked the structured frameworks and process needed to generate innovative ideas.

02/14

1995

Explored the 10 meta challenges facing life sciences and recognized the need for innovative thinking.

01/14

1998-2003

Worked alongside successful design thinking consultancies who helped innovate with products but couldn’t innovate with critical business challenges

03/14

2007

Had an epiphany reading Bill Duggan’s Strategic Intuition: The Creative Spark in Human Achievement

04/14

2007

Developed and piloted the three-step Precedent Driven Innovation approach and started applying it in the Life Science industry.

05/14

2010/11

Took the approach to build the foundation of the Strategic Innovation Lab at Columbia Business School.

06/14

2010-2015

Continued to develop the approach and apply it with a diverse group of global class brands including Amazon, Ikea, Coca Cola, Caterpillar, AMEX, NASA and FBI.

07/14

2012

Built a new innovation practice in a large consultancy across a variety of industries using the precent-based approach

08/14

2015

Recombinators was founded

11/14

2017

Using the Shaping Human Choice project partnered with Alessandro Tommasi and Cesare Zavattari to try to replicate the precedent search with machine learning, it couldn’t replicate the process.

09/14

2017

Lucy was founded. Working with John Favaro, Ken Favaro, Alessandro Tommasi and Cesare Zavattari, Nadim developed LUCY, a universal Challenge Tree aligned to over 10,000 winning ideas across functions and industries.

10/14

2020

Applied our approach in Strategic Innovation Workshops for C-level Executives and their Teams at Stanford School of Business

12/14

2022

Mike O’Connor joins Recombinators as a Partner to lead the new operational innovation practice.

13/14

2022

Recombinators Ranks No. 707 on the 2022 Inc. 5000 List among America’s Fastest-Growing Private Companies

14/14

10/14

Our Approach

We are different from other firms for four key reasons:

Absolute Customer-Centricity

Focus On Most Critical Challenges

Proven Innovation Approach

10K Winning Precedent Database

Evidence from diverse fields of research support the three principles of strategy & innovation

How does innovation happen?

Three “fundamental realities” explain how innovation actually happens:

01

Innovation is the result of “creative re-combination,” fueled by inspirations from unexpected places

02

Innovation begins with framing your critical challenge in new ways

03

Innovation cannot be delegated – those who own its implementation should be central to its generation

DELIVER

Our approach to innovation is proven to bring fresh ideas to life and bring new value to your projects:

01 FRAME

Strategic Innovation Challenge

01

perspectives

02

FACTS

03

PARAMETERS

04

PRIORITIZATION

Strategic Innovation Challenge

In FRAME, we discover your primary challenges and unlock a path to creative thinking

What We Do

02 CREATE

Breakthrough Ideas

01

Deconstruct

02

Disassociate

03

search

04

Filter

05

Recombine

Breakthrough Ideas

In CREATE, we find strategic analogs to critical challenges to stimulate unconstrained inspiration for innovative solutions

What We Do

03 PRIME

Innovation Strategy & Conditions to Succeed

01

MARKET SENSING

02

CAPABILITY FIT

03

IDEA DEVELOPMENT

04

PILOT, LAUNCH, LEARN

Innovation Strategy & Conditions to Succeed

In PRIME, we ground creative ideas to develop an action plan and drive immediate results in the market

What We Do

03 innovation pocket guide

innovation pocket guide

Our Clients

Our Innovation Journey

1990-2006

1995

1998-2003

2007

2007

2010/11

2010-2015

2012

2015

2017

2017

2020

2022

2022

MARKET
SENSING

CAPABILITY
FIT

IDEA
DEVELOPMENT

PILOT, LAUNCH,
LEARN