This presentation will share the story of how Katherine Radeka developed the Rapid Learning Cycles framework for innovation programs. Her journey started when a team tried to use Scrum in an Advanced R&D group at a large company. The team's struggles and successes led to three breakthroughs in how a team needs to apply Agile principles for physical products. She'll share how this team incorporated these breakthroughs to accelerate Advanced Research and how she systematized the process into a repeatable framework for driving innovation from idea to launch.

Katherine Radeka is a professional keynote speaker, author and the founder and executive director of the Rapid Learning Cycles Institute, which supports a growing global community of Rapid Learning Cycles Certified® Professionals who are actively using the framework to get their best ideas to market faster. She has worked with companies on every continent except Antarctica, and in industries from aerospace to medical devices and pharmaceuticals to consumer electronics and alternative energy. In 2015, Katherine published the first edition of The Shortest Distance Between You and Your New Product. Her first book, The Mastery of Innovation, was published in 2012 and won the Shingo Research Award. Her most recent book, High Velocity Innovation was published in Fall 2019 by Career Press. Katherine has climbed seven of the tallest peaks in the Cascade Mountains and spent ten days alone on the Pacific Crest Trail until an encounter with a bear convinced her that she needed a change in strategic direction.