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.
1995
Explored the 10 meta challenges facing life sciences and recognized the need for innovative thinking.
1998-2003
Worked alongside successful design thinking consultancies who helped innovate with products but couldn’t innovate with critical business challenges
2007
Had an epiphany reading Bill Duggan’s Strategic Intuition: The Creative Spark in Human Achievement
2007
Developed and piloted the three-step Precedent Driven Innovation approach and started applying it in the Life Science industry.
2010/11
Took the approach to build the foundation of the Strategic Innovation Lab at Columbia Business School.
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.
2012
Built a new innovation practice in a large consultancy across a variety of industries using the precent-based approach
2015
Recombinators was founded
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.
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.
2020
Applied our approach in Strategic Innovation Workshops for C-level Executives and their Teams at Stanford School of Business
2022
Mike O’Connor joins Recombinators as a Partner to lead the new operational innovation practice.
2022
Recombinators Ranks No. 707 on the 2022 Inc. 5000 List among America’s Fastest-Growing Private Companies
