Dean M. Schroeder is an award winning author, consultant and scholar. His work focuses on creating high-performing organizations and improving people’s work lives through the application of better management. Dr. Schroeder is the author of The Idea-Driven Organization: Unlocking The Power in Bottom-up Ideas and his best-selling book, Ideas Are Free: How the Idea Revolution is Liberating People and Transforming Organizations (co-authored with Alan Robinson). Dean shares the “Author of the Year – 2010” award from the Swedish Standards Institute with co-authors Louise Östberg and Alan Robinson for SMÅ IDÉER – STORA RESULTAT (Small Ideas – Huge Results). As a consultant and speaker, Dr. Schroeder has worked with many types of companies and organizations in North America, Europe, and Asia. He has personally led organizational turn around and transformation initiatives, and served on the Board of Examiners of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award for five years. Dr. Schroeder is the Herbert and Agnes Schulz Professor of Management at Valparaiso University and has taught at the University of Massachusetts, St. Petersburg Technical University in Russia and at ALBA in Greece. He received his Ph.D. in Strategic Management from the Carlson School at the University of Minnesota, his M.B.A. from the University of Montana, and his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the Institute of Technology at the University of Minnesota.

On the show, Dr. Schroeder discussed the importance of bottom-up ideas in business. 80% of growth ideas and improvement potential come from companies’ front lines. He gave an example of the success of these ideas by using Stockholm, Sweden’s Coca-Cola bottling plant, which implemented a solution from their line worker that saved the plant $17,000 per year. Dr. Schroeder talked about how to encourage bottom-up ideas in company culture, and how to coach employees to develop a common language for innovation. At the end of the segment, he explained the importance of collecting ideas from the customer and how to successfully filter the information from these customers.