Nancy Dawes is a Serial Innovator with roots in the CPG industry. Through her holistic innovation programs, she led major, breakthrough changes in the food (Pringles) and beauty (Olay) industries.
As a budding P&G innovator Nancy reinvented, reframed and tripled the Pringles brand by innovating and defining a new “crisps sub-category” (Pringles changed the game as a ‘crisp’). This established Pringles as the only US top-ten snack business not owned by Frito-Lay. On Olay, she grew a billion-dollar business by reframing the beauty aisle in mass retail and filling it with multiple new-to-the world products (Olay Total Effects, Regenerist, Definity, ProX). Importantly these innovations reinforced her creation of a “masstige” sub-category (mass + prestige) and established anti-aging as an industry-wide innovation vector. As a Serial Innovator, Nancy parallel-paths multiple lines of innovation practice. She leads consumer discovery research that uncovers consumer insights and sensory cues that she integrates with technologies to guide a holistic product design program. This enables business teams to reframe industry categories founded on new products and new market claims that excite consumers and in turn enable retailers to drive new markets at scale. A “look back” on her career path is a demonstration of serial innovation.

As a P&G Victor Mills Society research fellow, Nancy is a sought-after speaker and trainer on topics ranging from Serial Innovation to “inclusive leadership”. Inspired by Bruce Vojak, a co-author of Serial Innovators: How Individuals Create and Deliver Breakthrough Innovations in Mature Firms (where she was one of his studied subjects), Nancy conceptualized, developed curriculum, and taught modules of P&G’s highly successful “Serial Innovator” college. She also partnered with Quiet Leadership Institute (founded by Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking) and Ohio State University’s College of Engineering to co-create workshops to enable R&D to more fully leverage “style diversity”(introvert vs extrovert, male vs female, etc.).
Nancy currently consults with founders and early stage entrepreneurs linked with Queen City Angels, 1819 Venture (The University of Cincinnati), and Cincy Tech and continues her volunteer work for Girl Scouts of Western Ohio.