Rich NotargiacomoRich Notargiacomo, is a customer-focused and bottom-line results driven executive with a strong track record of successful innovation and new product development. With an engaging and collaborative management style and hands-on experience in manufacturing, operations, business and product management, marketing, strategic planning, and technology management, as well as new product development, he is able to lead and align organizations to achieve results.
As President of Innovation Focus — Rochester, LLC, Rich works with companies to grow revenues and profits through innovation and new products. He has coached and worked with business leaders and teams in companies of all sizes from startups to multi-billion dollar firms to diagnose and improve management practices in order to drive better products to market more quickly and efficiently. Recent engagements have helped companies develop their innovation strategy, generate deep customer understanding and insight, identify new product concepts, and drive alignment and collaboration between marketing and technical teams.
Prior to forming Innovation Focus — Rochester in early 2008, Rich was at Eastman Kodak where he was responsible for product development in a number of product lines. He brought a systems-level approach to the FunSaver Single Use Camera line resulting in the first co-developed film and camera. This product provided better picture quality and gained significant market share. While responsible for the development of Kodachrome and Ektachrome Films, Rich drove increased customer-focus that produced a new, "warmer" Ektachrome film, significantly increasing market share within weeks of introduction. As Special Projects Director for Kodak's CTO, Rich led the identification and management of a breakthrough technology portfolio that boosted Kodak's efforts in micro-electromechanical systems, semantic image understanding, and other technologies. Rich led the creation of a new strategy for the Advanced Photographic System which led to reduced investment. Finally, managing within Kodak's corporate innovation center, Rich coached teams in the identification of scores of new business concepts and the development of the more promising ones into comprehensive business proposals, bringing over 50 of them to executive-level decisions.
In all, he has "touched" over 150 new products and services, working with teams and partner companies in the United States, Europe, and Asia. He is the principal inventor on two patents in Internet-based commerce.
Rich is the immediate past Chairman and President of the Product Development and Management Association, a global professional association for people engage in product development and innovation. In this role he led the Association through a period of multi-dimensional growth, drove Board alignment on strategy, and achieved successful financial results through the recession of 2008-09.
He is also on the adjunct faculty in Rochester Institute of Technology's E. Philip Saunders College of Business where he teaches undergraduate and graduate level courses in technology commercialization, strategy and small business consulting. He also taught new business development at Kodak, winning the Instructor of the Year Award in two out of three years.
Rich holds an MBA in Marketing from the Simon Business School of the University of Rochester, a BS in Chemical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and New Product Development Professional certification from the Product Development and Management Association. He is a graduate of Coach University's Coach Training Program and the Leadership Development Program at the Center for Creative Leadership.
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