Dr. Frank R. Bacon is the founder of the Planned Innovation® Institute. He is Professor Emeritus of Marketing and Supply Chain Management at Michigan State University. He is the originator of the Planned Innovation® Process and principal author of several books on the subject, including “Planned Innovation”, published by the University of Michigan, and “Achieving Planned Innovation”. He is an internationally recognized authority on new product development and strategic planning.
Dr. Bacon is an accomplished aviator with many hours of flight time in general-aviation aircraft including the Beech King Air. He has completed several professional-pilot-training courses and worked on aviation-related research projects. He is former Research Program Director, Industrial Development Division, Institute of Science and Technology, at the University of Michigan.
Later he held joint appointments in the Colleges of Business and Engineering at Michigan State University where he pioneered the teaching of new product innovation in classes combining both business and engineering students and involved live projects from industry. He is a founding member of the Product Development and Management Association.
He has extensive hands-on experience assisting many domestic and foreign companies with the development of a wide variety of new products and product-market plans. These range from items such as materials handling robotics and computer systems for industrial/commercial product-markets to military/aerospace products such as avionics and flight data recorders to personal care products for consumer product markets. His clients also included the United Nations Industrial Development Organization. Dr. Bacon holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University. He received his MBA and PhD from University of Michigan.