Chez Peachy Exclusive Interview with Designer, Inventor, Entrepreneur & Professor, Dan Brown of LoggerHead Tools Sponsored by Topical BioMedics, Inc. (Topricin)
Dan Brown
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Designer, Inventor, Entrepreneur & Professor, Dan Brown is a champion of establishing a design leadership based business strategy in our economy. "Design is how humans create value; I believe in the power of design thinking, embodied in a process I call 'Differentiation by Design', and its creative ability to add value throughout the economy." Dan's vision is to advance this creative design strategy to compete in global markets.
A native of Chicago, Dan attended St. Xavier University, earning a Bachelors Degree in Biology, with a minor in Chemistry. Upon graduating, Dan embarked on a career in the chemical and plastics industry where he applied his science education, and natural ability in engineering to a fast track business career. While serving in roles of increasing responsibility in the rapidly globalizing marketplace of the 1980's, Dan quickly discovered the necessity of creating competitive product advantages to sustain a business model. These early marketplace experiences inspired Dan to identify and create several new technologies for his customers leading to the application for his first three patents for these products before the age of 30.
After 12 years of progressive responsibilities in managing businesses, Dan launched his own Product Design consultancy: Consul-Tech Concepts. Dan describes his design methodology as Differentiation by Design®, a product design process that discovers the unseen activity based product needs, seeking to reveal differentiated design solutions across all aspects of the user-product experience. As a consultant using this strategy, Dan has worked with large and small companies to create and commercialize many differentiated products and processes for their customers, often creatively redefining these spaces, while at the same time receiving an additional twenty patents for his unique and novel new product solutions.
In 2001, Dan challenged himself to create a case study project for his design philosophy, to validate the methodologies of his design strategies, and to provide a sales and marketing tool for his services. Seeking to create a new and innovative product while emulating the Differentiation by Design process, this vision resulted in the creation of the Bionic Wrench®. Launched at the National Hardware show in May 2005 from a newly founded entrepreneurial startup, LoggerHead Tools LLC, the Bionic Wrench has received over 10 international Design and Innovation Awards, while at the same time undertaking a very challenging path in today's consumer market of manufacturing the Bionic Wrench 100% in the USA.
As an advocate of leveraging design leadership to create and support sustainable markets, Dan has participated in numerous interviews, conferences and educational activities. One of Dan's life goals has been to teach; he earned a Masters Degree in Product Development (MPD) from Northwestern University where he is currently a Clinical Associate Professor at Northwestern teaching in both the Graduate and Undergraduate programs in the Segal Design Institute, McCormick School of Engineering. Collectively Dan's expertises in Design, Technology, and Business have provided him numerous experiences to share and advance his perspectives on his vision of design thinking, value creation and their ability to create and transform competitive markets. "I believe that the path to global economic competitiveness is user-centered design, competition based innovation, and the execution of differentiated value creating user solutions. This vision must include environmental and social sustainability, and free and fair marketplace accountability." We are so pleased to present Dan Brown as our latest Chez Peachy Exclusive Interview. Peachy Deegan interviewed Dan Brown for Whom You Know.
Peachy Deegan: What is your first inventing memory?
Dan Brown: When I was young (10 – 12 years old), I enjoyed combining bicycle parts that we found in the trash into unique bicycles. For example, we would use a larger old frame, with newer smaller wheels, “butterfly handlebars” and “banana seats” to create many unique and custom combinations. I distinctly getting the chains sized and working right presented a big challenge. I also liked to work with electricity and I would take old radios and scrounge speakers out of other old TV’s and radios and wire more speakers into an existing radio.
Did you play with tools a lot as a child?
My father was very handy; this arose out of the necessity to keep things working around the house without the expense of a repairman which my parents could not afford. My brother and I always were required to be by his side whenever he was working on a project. This started from my earliest memories, thus I learned about tools by watching and working with my father and eventually using them on my own projects. Our garage was full of tools, I spent many hours as a young man in the garage working on my bikes, and when I was 15, I purchased and restored a boat, followed by many cars with my father’s mentoring and tools. My father would always tell a story about me the summer I turned 16, and I was finally able to drive. That day my dad came home from work, and my car was in pieces in the driveway, he walked into the house and commented to my mother that I was “in way over my head” and that I would probably be in soon asking for help to get things put back together. About an hour later I did come into the kitchen and asked my father for the keys to his car, my dad (who did not allow me to drive his car) assumed I was looking to go out for the evening using his car because mine was in pieces. He immediately replied “you cannot use my car” and I replied I only wanted to move it because it was blocking my car from getting out of the driveway. I had finished the repairs, reassembled the car, and I wanted to take the car for a test drive. My father loved to tell this story on me to anyone who would listen, I am sure my own kids have heard it at least 30 times. As I sit here in my office writing this, I am looking at two large photos of my father working on the engine of one of my cars that broke down when I was in college, (I commuted to college and work every day and my car was a necessity). My, than girlfriend and now wife had taken these incredible black and white photos of my father, I love them, as they are the essence of his persona and life.
What makes a design creative as opposed to ordinary?
The designer’s passionate pursuit of strategic-“customer getting”-differentiation in the creative problem solving process. Design is the value creator in business, and when done well it creates competitive advantage for the designers and organizations that invest emotionally and monetarily in it. Thus, the pursuit of great design investments; passionately storming through the mental blocks, and allowing the proper time for the creation process to evolve, will allow novel product and services to arise above the ordinary. A creative design establishes a new to the world, unspoken emotional experience-connection between the designer and the user.
What is the process like of getting a patent for your designs?
Expensive and a lot of work to create a meaningful one, but I have been researching Patents and creating new designs for so long that I have become an expert in the Intellectual Property game. Specifically, I do the up front Patent work myself in the discovery and design stages of my product development process. Once I discover-design a better way to solve the problem, and it is validated in testing and with the end users, I strategically create and assemble the Patent Application of my invention, essentially it is integrated within the product development process. When ready, I give the Application to me Patent Attorney (who I have worked with for 30 years) to prosecute, and we work together as a team as it goes through the Patent Application process.
Why is it important to you to be made in the USA?
Simply, in my mind in order to have a sustainable economy in the USA, we must have good paying manufacturing jobs along with a diversity of other jobs in the economy. Our society is comprised of all types of people with various skills and interests, they all need to work and provide for their families in a way to collectively integrate in to a healthy society. While the service economy is important, it is not sufficient to sustain the employment, skill base of labor and economic independence of this country. Manufacturing jobs, and the additional jobs created by a domestic manufacturing base in a community are essential for a sustainable economy. Unfortunately, many of our politicians, business and labor leaders have chosen the wrong path for our country by their misguided beliefs, and for the most part incompetent execution of job and manufacturing policy in our society and economy. The best social welfare in any society is a good paying job, and while we need social safety nets to act as protection for the inevitable crisis times for families, the ability for the individual to work and provide for their families is the essential common denominator of a healthy sustainable family and society. Meaningful and rewarding work is essential for the success of an individual no matter what your race, economic status or education. The satisfaction of meaningful work creates a foundation for the mental and social health of the individual, who in turn can provide for himself and his dependents, building their families and a better society based on this personal fulfillment. My parents believed in work, and the character creating ability of a good job, I started working at a very young age and I worked my way through college with the help of my parents. I believe that the life lessons experienced along the way, the personal empowerment and character formation, along with the economic freedom the income I earned provided me, were very formative in the development of my own work ethic, character building and sense of empowerment for providing for my own family.
How can you influence others to also be made in the USA?
Practice what you preach. I believe that we are leading by example with our products and Made in the USA business model. Hopefully, the story of our success will give others the will and risk tolerance to also pursue this strategy for their own product commercialization. I operate on the belief that good design can create added-value in the marketplace, and that value can translate to a value-added price for the product that customers are more than willing to pay if they see the value. This value can translate to domestic manufacturing economics that establishes new economic opportunities earned by that new value, for new product experiences. I do not see the value of the current rhetorical expectation for innovation to create new jobs in our country, just because politicians shout it every time they get in front of a microphone. The reality is that most of the newly created products immediately head offshore for production, in essence skipping the domestic job creation of the innovation investment. I hope that we can prove that not everything needs to be manufactured offshore to be commercially viable, with the focus on the hard work it takes to make it happen, and not the emotional rhetoric that has actually undermined the reality of the process.
What or who has had the most influence on your pursuit of excellence?
Without a doubt my Mother and Father, both were very hard workers and they started from nothing, struggled for many years and worked incredibly hard to build our family. They had something that I recognize that we are losing in our country, the opportunity for meaningful work as a pathway to create a better life for your family. Although we did not have much material wealth growing up, we had an abundance of love, direction, support and discipline intertwined in our family structure. This basic level of family security that work provides is an economic necessity, but the balance in the family dynamic is at risk if you do not have work. We experienced this when my father did lose his job when the meat packing industry (where he had worked for 20 years) moved from Chicago in the mid 60’s. I remember these as very stressful years in our family and fortunately, my mother was a nurse, and her hard work sustained us until my father was able to find a new “meaningful” job. The stress and anxiety created in our family during the time my father was out of work was intense for all of us, and personally destructive to my father because his internal view of his own self worth plummeted. I also saw the ability of parents to function as they once had suffer because of the loss of a family sustaining income. As a team, my parents prevailed and pulled it back together, but that’s because my father was able to find a job, I am not sure they would have got it together as they did, had he not been able to find meaningful work. My parent’s guidance and commitment to the family have influenced and inspired me, and they are the most important influence in my pursuit of excellence.
What are you proudest of and why?
My family, I am very fortunate to have had unconditional love from great parents, an incredible and supportive wife & life partner, and two children (now adults) that I could not be prouder of. Our family is an extension my own upbringing, and we raised our children with the same family culture that I believe has been undermined and continues to be threatened in many parts of our society. Fortunately, for us we were able to provide and create this in our own lives, but I was painfully reminded of the delicate balance of this family dynamic during the recent recession. Having founded an entrepreneurial startup around the Bionic Wrench just prior to the recession, our family was thrown into our own “economic crisis” during it, and as my mother stepped up and saved the family when my father lost work, my wife also did so when the business and consequently my income was significantly challenged financially during the recent recession. I am very conscious that many families were not so fortunate as we have been, and they are in crisis now, this is why the most important thing for us socially is to find ways to create and sustain jobs in our economy, it is the only sustainable way to rescue these families and our collective society for the future.
What would you like to do professionally that you have not yet had the opportunity to do?
Build off my current professional achievements to lead constructive change in public and political policy starting with reforming the current corrupt nature of our debased political and legislative process. It is my personal philosophy that when I want to do something meaningful to me, I set the goal and pursue it. Currently in addition to my profession(‘s) as a Product Developer/Designer, Inventor and Entrepreneur, I am also a Clinical Professor teaching in the Segal Design Institute at Northwestern University in Evanston. I have worked hard in the pursuit of these goals, and you can see, I have been very fortunate professionally. I see my current professional responsibilities as philosophically symbiotic and socially and economically interrelated; I feel that I not only need to “talk the talk” by I have “walk the walk”, and my professional pursuits have provided me an excellent foundation for my future goals of leading positive change in our society, not just by rhetorical platitudes, but by example. I intend to continue to lead by example where possible commercially, and through teaching and mentoring others, in the pursuit of value creating efforts that are socially, economically and environmentally sustainable. I am currently also working on a book that is very important to me, the title is “Differentiation by Design®”, this is the “mantra”, I started my own Product Design consultancy with twenty years ago. One important related current goal is to find a publishing relationship as passionate as I am about creating value and influencing positive change to facilitate the completion of the book in the next year or so.
What honors and awards have you received in your profession?
2010 DIY Channel, "Top 25 Coolest Tools", only company to have two products in the top twenty-five, the ImmiX Multi-Tool achieved #2, and the Bionic Wrench achieved # 15
2009 Popular Mechanics, "Breakthrough Innovation Award"
2008 iF - International Forum Design "Universal Design Award"
2007 Plant Engineering Magazine (Bronze), "Product of the Year"
2007 iF International "Product of the Year Award" (second time received)
2007 Farm Industry News, "FinOvation Award", Award for Product Design
2006 Chicago Innovation Award, "Chicago Innovation Award"
2006 iF - International Forum Design "Product of the Year - Gold Award"
2006 Red Dot - "Red Dot Product Design - Best of the Best Award"
2005 Popular Mechanics "Editors Choice Award"
2005 Chicago Athenaeum, "Good Design Award"
Appointed Clinical Associate Professor, Northwestern University
Masters of Science Degree in Product Development from Northwestern University
31 US Patents earned in the practice of Product Development
1986 Insta Foam Products (division of Dow), "Circle of Distinction Award", youngest recipient ever of this coveted award for leadership, and contribution to the corporation.
What is your favorite drink?
A good “oak’y” Chardonnay and my wife says that I need to be honest and tell you that I live on coffee.
What is the funniest thing that has ever happened to you at a cocktail party?
I cannot think of anything funny happening to me at a party worth writing about.
What is your favorite restaurant in Manhattan?
When I visit NYC I always make one trip to the Carnegie Deli (I love the Pastrami). I have been in many great NYC restaurants, but the one I always make a point of going back to is the Carnegie Deli.
Who would you like to be for a day and why?
President, I fantasize that I would strategically plan for that one day, so I could somehow find a way to incite the citizens of this country to reform Congress, because I believe without reforming the corrupted legislative process, we will never be able to affect any meaningful change in our government or society. We need the leadership to not just rhetorically talk about change as a campaign panacea, we need a leader with the proven experience and commitment to others that will create the necessary change, or literally die trying, it is that important to our country.
If you could have dinner with any person living or passed, who would it be and why?
One more dinner with my parents who both have recently passed, and have provided me my role models, mentoring and inspiration.
What do you personally do or what have you done to give back to the world?
I was raised with the belief that “One Man (Woman) Can Make a Difference”, my mother would always remind me that is not what I do for myself, but it what I do for others that matters. I grew up in a kitchen that had a plaque that said:
"A hundred years from now, it will not matter what kind of car I drove, what kind of house I lived in, how much money I had in the bank...but the world may be a better place because I made a difference in the life of a child." -- Forest Witcraft
This upbringing has I believe inspired the commitment to our American Made vision, as a way of recreating American manufacturing jobs that serve to provide for the family culture we are losing and the opportunities for all families the opportunity for meaningful and fulfilling work, the resulting dignity and the promise of a better future for their children. Despite the sacrifice and risks, we have entrepreneurially undertaken in this endeavor, we have benefited from that promise and sacrifice of our parents and those before them. Leaving the society and marketplace in a better condition that you found it is a fundamental principle that we all need to embrace.
My personal belief is that I have been the beneficiary of the that old American dream and I have a responsibility to perpetuate it in a sustainable way. I hope we can serve as an inspiration to others with the same ideology and commitment. In addition, I see my teaching the future designers and value creators by practicing what I teach as a way of mentoring and giving young people the knowledge and skills to create new products and services in an ethical and sustainable way. I am always hoping that these very talented future problem solvers will go on to solve the problems that we have in the world with these skills, I get great satisfaction in doing this because I want to be a part of doing the right thing. I also find the students extremely motivated, and this in turn re-energizes my own personal efforts.
Other than Chez Peachy of course, what is your favorite Whom You Know column and what do you like about it?
In See Manhattan on Your Feet, I enjoyed the story of Anthony Marinelli, I especially like his choice of being “King for the day” but I also can identify with his entrepreneurial spirit, belief in design and love for his family and friends he expressed. I also enjoyed your “Keeping America on Top” article, about the Made in the USA Foundation from last November.
Have you drank The Peachy Deegan yet and if not, why not?
Not yet, but hopefully Peachy will buy me one next time I am in NYC!
What else should Whom You Know readers know about you?
Although I believe in American Made business models for value added products, I also believe in Global Free Trade as a basis of international integration, social growth and economic harmony, some people may see this as contradictory. What I do not support is the ridiculous “Free Trade” we are practicing now, but I envision a “Fair Trade” system of level playing fields, and respect for labors rights, environmental rights and economic sustainability within an accountable system. Simply the reality is that a “sweat shop” located domestically is no different than a “sweat shop” in a foreign country no matter where you life, the value of meaningful work is essential to all people. I believe we need to create and implement sustainable practices through strategic partnerships of ownership, management, government and labor for the greater benefit of all who invest their lives into our collective society. The realities of our misguided political and economic opportunism, and mismanagement have caught up to us, and we need to act now in order to correct the damage of the past in order to lay the foundation for any hope for our children in the future.
How would you like to be contacted by Whom You Know readers?
Dan Brown
