As the current Chief Executive Officer of Eureka! Ranch, Maggie lives by the quote by Dr. W. Edwards Deming – “94% of the problem is systems. 6% is the worker.” People naturally want to do great work. Maggie has a passion for building systems and coaching leaders to enable people to do that work, the cool stuff that truly matters.
Maggie Nichols joined the Eureka! Ranch in 1999 after graduating from Miami University’s Farmer School of Business. After reading an article about the Ranch during an Entrepreneurship class, she decided that the Eureka! Ranch was the place where she was going to work. Months and dozens of pestering visits later, Founder, Doug Hall, finally acquiesced and Maggie’s been part of the ranch ever since.
She started as an Apprentice Inventor working on innovation projects along side Doug Hall and the team. After a short stint working on internet strategy at a large corporate bank, she moved to Oxford, England where she supported Eureka!‘s European efforts. In 2005, she returned to the US as Vice President of R&D while also, continuing to oversee innovation projects. In those years she helped to pioneer the development of Innovation Engineering.
In 2009 Maggie was named President & Chief Operating Officer – not only leading the team at Eureka! Ranch and the Innovation Engineering Institute, but helping C-Level Executives around the world guide their employees and teams through innovation. She has served as innovation coach and educator to some of the world’s largest companies and non-profits including American Express, Humana, March of Dimes, and P&G. In Summer, 2018 Maggie was named CEO & President of Eureka! Ranch.
Maggie is a self reported introvert, but when it comes to Innovation Education and Leadership you’ll find her passion makes her talk fast, furiously and incessantly providing an incredible energy to any event.
Maggie is a Miami University (that is Ohio) graduate who is married to her college sweetheart, Brian. They live in Cincinnati, Ohio with their two kids.
Driving Eureka! is a high energy experience that teaches principles for how everyone can think smarter, faster and more innovatively. Unlike other innovation presentations Driving Eureka! is grounded in quantitative data making the teachings reliable and reproducible. It’s also validated in the real world from over $17 billion worth of projects for innovations in operations, cost, effectiveness, products and services.
And while this talk will be delivered with zeal and remain data-based, the entire message and practical tips are focused on what you can do RIGHT NOW in your life to invent and reinvent your future.
The talk is based on DRIVING EUREKA! – the latest innovation book by Eureka! Ranch founder, Doug Hall who has been Maggie’s mentor for over 15 years. The talk and the book reveal the results of 40 years of research and experimentation so substantial that it’s become a new field of study – Innovation Engineering.
The key takeaways are:
1 How you can CREATE & FIND 8X more BIG IDEAS – for anything
2 How to FILTER out the great ideas from the bad ones.
3 How to FAST TRACK your big ideas, so you can make the changes you dream about NOW
