A Conversation with Innovation Consultant Mark Payne '84

Join the Center for Careers and Internships for a conversation with Innovation Consultant Mark Payne ‘84

As co-founder and president of the leading innovation consultancy Fahrenheit 212, Mark Payne has spearheaded innovation projects that have created over $3 billion in revenue for Fortune 500 companies, entrepreneurial emerging businesses, and private equity firms.

As the architect of the firm’s Money + Magic philosophy, its outcome-based business model and its breakthrough Two-Sided Innovation Method of fusing analytical commercial strategy with user-centered creativity, he is both a front line innovator shaping new product pipelines for the world’s great companies, and an industry thought leader. Challenging innovation myths and orthodoxies, driving toward more effective ways to think and work in pursuit of the growth companies rely on innovation to deliver.

Fahrenheit 212 has been described as ‘The Innovator’s Paradise’ by Fortune, a ‘White Hot Idea Factory’ by BusinessWeek, the ‘Epicenter of Innovation’ by Esquire, and ‘Melding the Best of McKinsey & IDEO’ by Fast Company.

Mark’s insights on how innovators from big organizations to startups can transform the odds of success are captured in the book How to Kill a Unicorn (Penguin Random House/Crown Business, October 2014) highlighted with behind the scenes stories from the firm’s work with the likes of The Coca-Cola Company, Samsung, Procter & Gamble, and GE.

A regularly quoted innovation expert, his perspectives have appeared in leading publications including Fast Company, Fortune, BusinessWeek, Investor’s Business Daily, Wired and Crane’s. A provocative speaker on the subjects of innovation methodology, creative thinking, growth strategy and design, his recent speaking engagements have included the Chief Innovation Officers’ Summit (New York, London), Harvard Business School’s xDesign Conference, FT Innovate, the Wharton School of Business, Columbia Business School, Pratt Institute of Design, IFT Wellness, New York University, HEC Paris, Johns Hopkins University, and leadership conferences at many top tier companies.

Mark holds a BA cum laude in economics and psychology from Middlebury College, coaches little league baseball, collects vintage guitars, and is a trustee of the Woodstock Day School.