Curt Carlson in an internationally recognized innovator and thought leader on the practice of innovation.  

As CEO of SRI International in Silicon Valley from 1998 to 2014, SRI became a global model for the creation of high-value innovations worth tens of billions of dollars, such as HDTV, Intuitive Surgical for robotic surgery, and Siri on the iPhone.  Mayfield Ventures partner, David Ladd, said, “SRI is now the leading company in the world at converting its technology into commercial value.” 

His teams have won two Emmys, one for HDTV and one for optimized satellite broadcast image quality.  He has helped start over twenty-five new companies. 

Carlson is a professor at WPI and Northeastern Universities, where he teaches value creation and innovation.  Northeastern University has created an online program for Coursera that teaches his value creation methodology, Innovation for Impact (https://www.coursera.org/learn/valuecreation).  A recent article in the Harvard Business Review describes his methodology (https://hbr.org/2020/11/innovation-for-impact?registration=success). 

Carlson’s company, Practice of Innovation, works with companies, governments, and universities to improve innovative performance.  Services include workshops based on Carlson’s proven value-creation practices. These practices are used word-wide by leading companies and government agencies, including in Sweden, Finland, Chile, Singapore, Japan, and Taiwan.

He served on President Obama's National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship.  He was also a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Singapore.

With the National Academy of Engineering he helped develop improved U.S. R&D and innovation policies and practices for the National Science Foundation. He has served on many commercial and government boards, including the Air Force Science Advisory Board.

Carlson is a founding Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. He won the Otto Schade Prize for Display Performance and Image Quality from the Society for Information Display and he received the Suffolk University’s first Global Leadership in Innovation Award. 

He has honorary degrees from the Malaysian Technical University, Stevens Institute, Kettering University, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute.  He is an honorary Kobe, Japan Ambassador.

Carlson wrote with William Wilmot, Innovation: The Five Disciplines for Creating What Customers Want.  That year Innovation was selected by BusinessWeek as a Top-10 Business Book.

Carlson is a Tau Beta Pi physics graduate from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI).  His M.S. and Ph.D. degrees are from Rutgers University.  He is a WPI Trustee emeritus and a WPI Hall of Fame Luminary given to only two dozen graduates in the schools 155-year history.