About

Andrew Faulkner

I spent my career in B2B technology as a product line director, VP Marketing and running my own sales and marketing company. Today I teach a graduate course in creativity and innovation at the University of Ottawa, teach at Algonquin College, and run OPMMA and ProductCamp Ottawa, both of which I co-founded.

Why I do this

I was lucky to start my career at Texas Instruments and was surrounded by some very talented people. TI invested heavily in us, and I went on a lot of courses. Most were what you’d expect, but a few stayed with me: Quality Function Deployment, Failure Mode and Effects Analysis, Marketing High Technology and the Seven QC Tools. I still have my TI copy of The Memory Jogger, a pocket guide to the Seven QC Tools, 40 years later.

I loved how practical it was and wanted to write something as useful for problem solving. Building the Creativity and Innovation workshops gave me that chance. I overshot seven tools by some distance, but I’ve collected a few in 40 years and I’m still adding more.

Cranial-8: where the name comes from

In 2008 I was Product Line Director at Zarlink, responsible for acoustic echo cancellation products for the consumer market. It was a new market for us. We had just invested heavily to catch up with the competition and were in a position to overtake them. Then the company decided not to fund a second generation. The R&D team was moved onto more general work, routine rather than architectural innovation in Gary Pisano’s terms, and the plan was to wait and see how the current product did before starting on the next one. In a fast-moving consumer market, that meant falling behind again.

A few of us on the product line team didn’t agree with the decision, so we left to buy the product line ourselves. Our system architect came up with the name. The eighth cranial nerve carries sound from the ear to the brain, which suited a company building acoustic echo cancellation products, and Cranial-8 Acoustics was federally incorporated that year.

We raised investment commitments but never managed to close the acquisition. The company has changed direction several times since, and I kept the name each time. The arcs in the logo are sound waves from those acoustic days. These days I read the name as a reminder to keep listening.

Andrew Faulkner

Cranial-8: where the name comes from

Is there a problem your team keeps circling?