Who is this guy?

I’m Hutch Carpenter, and this is my blog. If you want to email me, feel free to click the big red email icon. Also, I’m @bhc3 on Twitter.

I’m a Senior Consultant with HYPE Innovation. I  work with companies on excelling at innovation and problem-solving through social and crowdsourcing principles. Develop with each client a rigorous approach to assess, iteratively develop and implement the most promising ideas. Help companies answer the question, “How can we find the best ideas for our strategic and operational challenges, and make them a reality?”

I’m also a big advocate for bringing customers’ needs and wants into the innovation and product development process. I call these jobs-to-be-done, and have written extensively about them on this blog.

Previously, I was VP Product for Spigit (worked there from Mar. 2009 – Sep. 2013). Spigit offered a SaaS innovation management platform for enterprises. The company was acquired by Mindjet in September 2013.

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Here’s a bit more of my background:

I got my MBA from the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, where I managed to receive the Faculty Award for Academic Excellence awarded to the top 10% of the graduating class. Out of school, I worked my way up to Vice President for Banc of America Securities doing something called syndicated loans. I left BofA in 2000 after the NationsBank acquisition.

Since then, I’ve been deeply involved in the software industry with several interesting companies. My first tech job was with eFinance (now Identrust), where I designed statistical credit scorecards for Hertz Equipment Rental and collections workflow optimization for Automated Data Processing (the folks that handle your paycheck). After eFinance, I spent a couple years with Pay By Touch, where I was the Senior Product Manager for the SmartShop Recommendation System. This system matched shoppers’ purchase histories against a pool of discounts provided by grocers and consumer packaged goods (CPGs) manufacturers. We brought to the offline world of grocery the benefits of recommendation systems that companies like Amazon.com enjoy.

After Pay By Touch, I worked with BEA Systems as a Senior Product Marketing Manager for its Enterprise 2.o products. It’s that job that made me start blogging on February 9, 2008, and I’ve been enjoying it ever since.

After Oracle bought BEA Systems, I went to work for Connectbeam, as a Senior Product Manager, a job I got through social media. Connectbeam ties together the social software applications of companies, adding a new layer of value to them and increasing their adoption.

I don’t talk about hard core tech stuff here like php or dojo, but I do enjoy exploring the functionality of apps and thinking about their business aspects.

There’s a simple categorization scheme on this blog: ‘geek‘ or ‘mba‘. The category cloud on the right side of each page will guide you to posts for either one.