TCGen’s Principals have a track record as practitioners and managers at blue-chip companies, developing innovative products enjoyed by millions of customers. We own a suite of product development best practices that we tailor and teach to managers and the team.
Our agile transformations scale to fit your organization’s culture. Our product strategy and portfolio management technologies help accelerate product development schedules, improving predictability and new product success rates. Our Agile Product Development approach helps you understand the application of Agile principles to new product development.
Customized Solutions
We work closely with you to develop an approach that works for your company – whether you are large or small, a start-up or an established firm. We set the project plan with you to create an engagement that achieves measurable product development goals. How we customize arrangements is described on our product management consulting page.
Sustainable Best Practices
Your investment in TCGen earns increased organizational capability. We not only implement best practices, but we also teach you how to build on the improvements so that your company is prepared for the next challenge. Our product development consulting page describes how we selectively improve innovation and time to market.
Assessment & Planning
Our proprietary project history and assessment process yields deep insights for your team. We identify the root causes of bottlenecks and develop solutions that streamline your processes and speed products to market.
Predictive Metrics
Expertise in metrics is a hallmark of TCGen. We rely on measurement to motivate change and monitor progress. We measure the right behaviors to ensure that the changes take hold and continue to produce lasting results.
Our Product Management Experts
John Carter
TCGen Principal & Founder
Nolan Myers
TCGen Principal
John Sadler
TCGen Principal
Brion Roberto
Jeanne Bradford
David Vermette
Krista Brown
Marcus Clarke
John Carter has been a widely respected adviser to technology firms over his career. John is the author of Innovate Products Faster: Graphical Tools for Accelerating Product Development. As Founder and Principal of TCGen Inc., he has advised some of the most revered technology firms in the world:
• Abbott, Amazon, Apple
• BD, BOSE, Cisco, Fitbit
• HP, IBM, Roche
He specializes in the value-creating aspects of product development – from the strategy and innovation processes through product definition, execution, and launch. He has helped companies cut time to market, rapidly scale their product program, and improve innovation with customer-led insights, leading to greater profitability, reduced costs, and improved customer satisfaction.
John served on the Board of Directors of Cirrus Logic (CRUS), a leading supplier of mixed-signal semiconductors. He was involved with company strategy and was a member of the Compensation and Audit Committees.
He was the founder of Cambridge-based Product Development Consulting, Inc. (PDC), a consultancy advising Fortune 500 companies in the areas of research, development, and marketing. During his time there, he worked with Apple to create the Apple New Product Process (ANPP) which is used in all product divisions. He has been an invited speaker at MIT and Stanford University, and a member of the faculty at Case Western’s Executive program.
Before starting PDC, John was Chief Engineer of BOSE Corporation. John is the inventor of the Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones and shares the original patent with Dr. Amar Bose. He was one of the initial contributors in BOSE’s entry into the automobile OEM business and led the product and business development of BOSE’s patented noise reduction technology for the military market.
He earned his MS in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a BS in engineering from Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, CA.
Nolan has 20 years of experience leading product development at innovative software companies that have modernized operations in large enterprises and governments. As CEO, he founded and built a software company that ran operations for new cities in Africa and Latin America. As an executive in product and customer success, he built and deployed a mobile-first training platform that improves workforce productivity for large frontline teams and shifts legacy workflows from print to digital. Clients for whom he’s led change management initiatives include Starbucks, McDonald’s, McGraw-Hill, Houghton-Mifflin Harcourt, and Pearson. As an operations leader, he scaled outsourced content development with knowledge management partners in India.
Nolan has been a TCGen affiliate since 2019 and contributed to innovation and operations improvement projects in software and hardware product development. Outside of TCGen, he has advised Silicon Valley startups on product and customer success strategy and holds a degree in computer science from Harvard. He enjoys playing music on the violin, guitar, and piano and aims to complete a triathlon in 2024.
John Sadler focuses on helping executive leaders create the conditions for their teams to deliver value more rapidly to market, especially when software is involved. Professional experience in multiple markets, including medical devices, life sciences, internet, and consumer products, as well as proficiency in business strategy and multiple technical disciplines, allow John to bridge skill silos to get results.
John was most recently VP/GM of the enterprise software division of Agilent Technologies. In that role, he sponsored and led a delivery turnaround resulting in annual revenue growth over 2X market, consistent on-time release cadence with outstanding field quality, a thriving acquisition growing at 35%, and a clear and customer-validated digital lab strategy embraced across the company. Critical to this success was the development and effective use of scaled agile practices across multiple sites globally, including outsourcing partners and a strong culture of continuous improvement.
John earned his MS in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University’s Design Division and his BS in Mechanical Engineering at MIT, focusing on feedback control systems. He is an inventor of over 20 patent families and is the author of Ficl, a widely adopted open-source software package for embedded systems scripting.
With more than 20 years of experience, Brion is a leader focused on driving innovation and tackling challenging customer problems. He brings a wealth of senior executive cross-functional experience piloting global product management, marketing, and technology organizations. From startups to leading companies such as Diageo, Sanofi, Gartner, and The Washington Post, Brion’s unique approach has garnered awards for exceptional products that deliver.
His achievements include successfully managing a global, enterprise-wide $50MM digital transformation and creating double-digit growth for a mature $200MM technology service and product. Brion has also pioneered the creation of product management capabilities in several organizations while demonstrating efficiency and achieving outcome-based KPIs.
At TCGen, he has been a leading contributor to engagements with Workday and Brother. Brion attended George Washington University and maintains several diverse certifications, from Digital Health to Google technology.
As Principal of TCGen, Jeanne has been a trusted advisor to some of the industry’s leading technology companies in the areas of product development, program management, and operations. She has led global organizations to deliver compelling products and technologies for companies like Apple, Cisco, and Texas Instruments. She co-authors the book Innovate Products Faster with John Carter: Graphical Tools for Accelerating Product Development.
While leading the ANPP initiative at Apple, Jeanne re-wrote the company’s new product development process, building the core capability that allowed Apple to deliver innovative new products to market.
Jeanne is a frequent industry speaker on the topics of product development best practices and the application of social technologies to the product innovation process. She earned a MBA from Santa Clara University and a BA in mathematics from the University of Missouri in Columbia, MO.
David Vermette has over 25 years of experience as an analyst, researcher, and writer specializing in product development and R&D management. He has managed numerous primary research studies of product development best practices. He has interviewed scores of product development practitioners from such companies as Ford, Motorola, and Xerox, as well as global thought leaders, consultants, authors, and academics. He has authored or co-authored white papers, case studies, reports, and presentations. He has contributed to research published by Oxford University Press and covered by The Wall Street Journal.
For TCGen, David has collaborated on projects for Inkling, Roche, and Bluescape. David also serves as an editor for TrustedPeer Inc., where he has conducted in-depth interviews with more than 30 international consultants in such fields as R&D metrics, digital marketing, and customer experience research.
David was editor in chief of The Management Roundtable’s monthly newsletter Product Development Best Practices Report. For Goldense Group, Inc., David managed biennial primary research studies on Product Development metrics. David’s clients have also included CSC, The Fetzer Institute, Realization Inc., and Business Enterprise Mapping, Inc.
David was a Research Associate at Product Development Consulting, Boston, MA, and a Research Analyst for Thomson & Thomson (now Thomson CompuMark) of Boston. He holds a B.A. from St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD, and a M.M. from the New England Conservatory of Music.
Krista Brown has a proven record of identifying and removing obstacles with her transparent leadership style and relationship-building background. With a career focused on technology companies, she has created 75+ high-margin service offerings. She was the SVP who led the strategic management of a solution portfolio, delivering $300 million in annual global sales revenue. She has also led the creation of a Portfolio Management organization for a large healthcare insurer. Intended to eliminate low-value activities and optimize capacity, the project saved $26M in savings by eliminating low-value work within its first six months.
Marcus has worked in B2B and B2C marketing and research for over a decade. While being a T-shaped marketer, Marcus specializes in helping brands grow their organic presence online by assisting companies to find their audience through content and relationships.