Adam Ward

Adam Ward is an Innovation Leader with over 25 years of strategy and product development experience. He began his career as a design engineer at Honda R&D before becoming the Lean Product Development Strategy Leader at GE Healthcare. Most recently, he was at Simpler, an IBM Health Company. Adam continues to coach C-Suite healthcare teams worldwide on client delivery redesign with a focus on new product development, services enhancement, and organizational transformation. He is one of the early adopters of innovation techniques in healthcare and has been at the ground level for major projects, including GE’s $8B Diagnostic Imaging Division. He is the creator of GE’s Disruptive Cost Workout methodology, which continues to be their business standard. As an innovation consultant with Simpler, Adam has guided clients like Atrius Health, Northwestern Mutual, Lockheed Martin, and the U.S. Air Force to leverage lean product development to increase the ability to create new products, services, and patient-care models. His project at Lockheed Martin won their prestigious Team of the Year Improvement Award and Adam has won the President’s Award from Honda, GE and Simpler for his innovation methods. Adam has a Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Maryland and an MBA from Ohio State University, in addition to attending GE’s Crotonville leadership courses and its Management Development Course. Adam now guest lectures at Ohio State for both graduate and undergraduate programs on innovation, leadership, customer understanding, and change management. An accomplished triathlete, Adam has competed twice in the US National Championship, twice in the Ironman 70.3 World Championship, completed three Ironman races, and has completed an Ultraman. He is a sought-after speaker and adviser on the topic of innovation and coaches students at Ohio State's MBOE program.