MARKET-DRIVEN INNOVATION EXCELLENCE
A Market-Driven Excellence Program by Lawrence Innovation
For R&D scientists, engineers, technical managers, application experts, and innovation leads ready to sharpen their market-driven critical thinking capability. From problem identification through assumption validation and solution fit, your team will learn to consistently connect technical expertise to real market demand to develop solutions that deliver on expectations while making a positive impact.
Solving the Right Problems. Delivering Maximum Impact. Consistently.
Why Innovation Often Feels Like a Pressure Cooker
You want your R&D team to develop solutions to profitable problems. You want them thinking. Questioning. Fully defining the problem before building the solution. Identifying multiple solutions and selecting the path that best addresses customer needs. Before budgets are committed to solutions that may not land.
That is harder than it sounds. And when it is not happening consistently, the frustration builds. Projects start without a clear problem definition. Teams move quickly to solutions before the full picture is understood. Customers and market insight come in late if at all. And somewhere along the way, months or years into a development cycle, the commercial team says the market does not need what R&D built. Or leadership says the ROI on R&D spend is not there. Credibility is lost and getting the investment for the next innovation project is harder.
This gap commonly shows up in a few different ways. Someone says our people need to be better at critical thinking. Leadership says R&D needs to be more innovative. The commercial team says R&D is not solving the problems the market actually needs. R&D itself feels stuck, working hard but not sure individual effort is pointed in the right direction. Or, there’s at least one project in the portfolio that’s old enough to go to kindergarten that continues to rack up a massive spend with no clear end in sight. These are symptoms and rarely where the problem starts. Like a bad cough, it is where the problem shows up.
The root cause is typically hidden in a chain of events that looks like this:
Problems are not always clearly framed at the start, making it nearly impossible to develop the right solution.
Outside perspective is not consistently used early, so teams miss what customers actually need before committing to a direction.
Teams move quickly to solutions with limited exploration of alternatives, narrowing options before the full picture is understood.
Value and trade-offs are clarified too late, after significant investment has already been made.
The assumptions are not validated early enough, and not revisited as market dynamics shift throughout long development cycles.
Kiss / kill decision criteria are vague so approved projects linger on like leeches sucking up budget.
Early decisions feel uncertain, leaving teams without the confidence to make clear recommendations to leadership.
Without these crucial steps, R&D investment is a gamble and pressure mounts. This is one of the most common and most solvable process gaps in B2B organizations. And it is exactly what this program is built to address.
This Program Was Built to Help You Accelerate and De-Risk INNOVATION. systematically. practically. Without the Crushing Pressure.
Whether you are focused on incremental new product development or breakthrough innovation, the foundation is the same. Market-Driven Innovation Excellence builds the R&D capability your team needs to execute across the full spectrum of growth.
This program is built for organizations whose R&D teams are responsible for developing solutions to market problems across growth horizons:
strengthening and extending existing products and technologies through incremental innovation
bringing new technologies and products to existing markets
applying existing capabilities to new markets and new customer problems
pursuing new technologies for entirely new markets
The program can be staged to match your organization's starting point. The foundation is consistent. The application is customized to where your growth priority lives right now. Some teams begin with near-term projects before progressing to more advanced capabilities in new technology development. Others bring the full team to align on the foundation, while individuals apply the learnings to their specific area of innovation responsibility. We are here to support your growth journey in the manner that is right for your organization.
How to Tell If This Program Is the Right Fit
Leadership is asking for improved ROI on R&D spend.
Products are commercialized but do not deliver the desired profitability.
Problem definition is incomplete before development begins.
Outside perspective is not used early or often enough.
Teams move quickly to solutions without considering the full solution set and the best path for all stakeholders, customer, value chain, and internal teams.
Projects take longer than projected.
Projects go over budget.
Teams are pushing ideas in the form of solutions without first validating customer unmet needs and the problem to be solved.
You want better data on which to base informed decisions.
Your team is missing a shared system, shared language, or repeatable process to execute innovation consistently across the organization.
Technical ideas lack the market evidence to earn leadership confidence and investment.
If any of these describe your organization, we should talk.
What Practitioners Learn
We teach practitioners the critical thinking skills and market-driven frameworks to define the profitable problems worth solving and deliver solutions that make a real impact. Specific topics are selected and customized to your organization's needs and may include:
Know where to look for problems worth solving
Define problems clearly and consistently
Surface what must be true for success
Use external insight to reduce uncertainty
Determine whether a problem is worth your time
Expand options before committing to a solution
Evaluate solution fit with greater rigor
Make confident early recommendations
What Success Looks Like
Every month saved on development equals accelerated impact.
When your team completes this program, they will operate from a shared system and a common language. They will consistently identify problems grounded in real market demand before committing to solutions. They will validate assumptions early and revisit them as markets evolve. They will make confident recommendations to leadership, backed by evidence. And they will know when to advance, when to pivot, and when to stop, before the investment is already made.
Behavior change you will see:
Teams look beyond internal assumptions to identify problems.
External experts and customers inform early thinking.
Problems are clearly defined before solutions are pursued.
Problems are tested for business value before investment.
Multiple solution paths are explored deliberately.
Solutions are evaluated against customer value, risk, and fit.
Next best alternatives are identified and benchmarked.
Evidence guides advance, pivot, or stop decisions.
Learning is reinforced through application, coaching, follow-up, and repetition.
What your organization gains:
Opportunities grounded in real market demand.
Fewer blind spots and stronger strategic confidence.
Reduced rework and faster development cycles.
Higher R&D hit rates and ROI.
Stronger differentiation and smarter trade-offs.
Fewer mismatched or overengineered outcomes.
Clearer value propositions and better decision quality.
Less sunk-cost drag and faster portfolio movement.
Sustained capability, not one-time training impact.
How the Program Works
Leadership. Training. Coaching. One integrated system.
Leadership Alignment Before the program launches we interview your leadership team and a practitioner subset to understand where the organization is today, what success looks like, and what barriers might get in the way. We meet with the full leadership team to review findings, align on the path forward, and agree on what the program will address. Count on us for transparency. You will never be surprised by hidden fees or unexpected findings.
Training The program opens with a foundational half-day kickoff. We reveal the program goals established during leadership alignment, including what peers identified as priorities for change. We set expectations, review accountabilities, and ask every practitioner to make a verbal commitment to the group. This is an active program. We set that tone in the first fifteen minutes. Monthly one-hour cohort sessions follow throughout the year. Every session is customized to your industry, built on neuroscience-based learning principles, and designed to move from comprehension to applicability. Practitioners leave every session with clear next actions for their own projects.
Coaching Every practitioner has direct access to Kelly throughout the program. Sessions are flexible and practitioner-driven. We are here to help your team get unstuck and make meaningful progress on real projects in real time.
Why Lawrence Innovation
Innovation training that is generic, consumer-focused, or disconnected from the realities of B2B technical development does not move the needle for R&D teams. I know because I have worked alongside R&D teams throughout my career and watched well-intentioned training fade within months because it was not grounded in the work they actually do.
Every practitioner involved in this program has spent decades executing market-driven excellence in B2B environments, building their own consultancy, and publishing and speaking on organic growth. We did not study growth and innovation from the outside. We built profitable solutions from the inside, in roles where the results were our responsibility.
Kelly Lawrence has spent a career solving the hardest growth problems in the room. Prior to founding Lawrence Innovation, her team built a mid-eight-figure business at Berkshire Hathaway's Lubrizol during the analog-to-digital inflection in the print industry. She has coached thousands of team members across Fortune 500 companies and growth-stage businesses representing over $120 billion in revenue.
Limited Spots Remaining
Now forming 2026 and 2027 cohorts.
The first step is a conversation. No preparation required. Just an honest discussion about where your organization is, where you want to go, and whether this program is the right fit.