Outdoor industry expert Joe Mc Swiney on product development and how innovators can approach reinventing some of our most basic products.

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Joe Mc Swiney has been President of Cascade Designs Inc. since 2006. Prior to that he served General Manager for the European subsidiary from 1995. Cascade Designs is an innovator and manufacturer of premium branded outdoor recreation equipment. The primary brands are: Therm-a-Rest®, MSR®, Platypus®, PackTowl®, SealLine® and the newly created MSR Global Health™. Joe has a Bachelors Degree in Electronics Engineering from the Cork Institute of Technology and an MBA from University College Galway. He is married with three kids and a dog. Joe is a passionate sustainability activist and has over the years has been involved with of the European Association for Conversation (EOCA), the Eco Index (now called the Higg Index) and currently serves as co-chair of the European Outdoor Group Sustainability Council. Recently Joe volunteered as a mentor to the local Seattle Impact Hub to help Obama Stove defeat cooking smoke related early mortality in Africa. Joe enjoys a wide variety of sports and outdoor activities including hiking, mountain biking, trail running (barefoot style), bouldering, surfing, snowboarding, long boarding, parkour and martial arts. He is Treasurer of Parkour Visions, a local non-profit than seeks to take parkour the masses, one giant leap at a time.