Dr. Carl N. Nett is a technopreneur specializing in technology-based innovation, entrepreneurship and economic development, spanning technology development, transfer, licensing and commercialization, in engagements with companies, government agencies and universities. Carl brings to these engagements an unusually broad and deep understanding of the “knowledge-to-value” process and related leadership issues, owing to his direct experience in corporate research labs and operating units, start-up companies and academia, coupled with his experience in senior executive leadership roles in research and development, front-line engineering and operations, product strategy and management, and start-up management. A novel aspect of many of these engagements is a focus on breakthrough-oriented, systematic methods for opportunity identification, competitive strategy formulation and inventive problem solving that both enhance innovation capability and effectiveness, and render innovation a more reliable and dependable process. In this context, Carl typically contributes initially to education, training, and point application, and later to strategies and plans for enterprise-wide deployment and institutionalization.
More recently, Carl has become active with private equity firms, supporting pre-deal due diligence efforts; post-deal turnaround and improvement efforts; and post-turnaround liquidity events. These efforts typically draw most deeply upon Carl's broad-based operational and leadership experience, particularly in the areas of product & service improvement; market analysis and competitive positioning; and talent development & identification. Carl's contributions in this regard are typically institutionalized through deep seated changes in the underlying processes and people.
Impact Innovation, Inc.
Carl is currently CEO and President of Impact Innovation, Inc., an innovation services consulting firm he founded in late 2004. Impact Innovation partners with companies, government agencies and universities to deliver impact through innovation, increasing their innovation effectiveness and capability through project engagements that ensure the success and maximize the impact of select mission critical innovation projects, and process engagements that render innovation a more systematic, repeatable, and dependable process. Impact Innovation brings to these engagements technopreneurial talent, techniques and tools which fuse the characteristics of habitually successful entrepreneurs and technologists, under an operating paradigm of technical excellence targeted by business acumen, optimized through process discipline. Impact Innovation’s associates have led conception, development and deployment of a large number of differentiated products and services into the marketplace to drive growth, particularly in the fields of aerospace power systems, energy systems and HVAC & refrigeration systems, in which they also have extensive real-world experience in successfully establishing, deploying, and institutionalizing innovation process, tools and techniques. Impact Innovation became profitable in 2005, its first full year of operation, and has achieved a 100% client follow-on engagement rate since opening for business.
ToneDoctor, LLC
Carl is also CEO and President of ToneDoctor, LLC, a manufacturing-retail firm he founded in early 2005 to serve the boutique (audiophile) guitar gear market segment with innovative, patent-pending products aimed principally at providing tonal variety, with absolute sonic integrity, in products retrofittable to existing gear. Carl conceived, designed and developed eight such products, drawing on his 25 years as a practicing electric guitarist and extensive experience in technology-based innovation and entrepreneurship. ToneDoctor will release these eight products into the marketplace in 1Q07, under the tagline “new medicines for your tones”. These products will be taken to market through an on-line web store, as well as through OEM partners and retailers serving the boutique music gear segment worldwide. Ultimately, the technology will be licensed for printed circuit board production to large OEM’s serving the mass market segment, while ToneDoctor retains exclusive rights for point-to-point, hand-wired production for the more discriminating, higher margin, boutique market segment.
UTC
Carl was most recently Vice President, Products & Applications, for UTC Power, a United Technologies Corporation (UTC) company specializing in distributed generation and power products for stationary and transportation markets. In this role Carl was responsible for all aspects of product management and applications engineering in the stationary segment, including market and competitive analysis, technology scanning, product and service strategy, go-to-market strategy, sales literature and tools, support of business development and sales, and post-contract integration at customer sites. Under Carl’s leadership, UTC Power released to the marketplace three new combined cooling, heating and power solutions based on microturbine and absorption chiller technology, along with a novel solution for cost-effective conversion of low-grade waste-heat into electricity based on organic Rankine cycle (ORC) technology.
Carl joined UTC Power in 2003, previously serving as Director, United Technologies Research Center (UTRC), the primary research facility for UTC. In this role, Carl was responsible for all strategic and operational aspects of UTRC, partnering with each of UTC's seven companies. Carl initiated and led UTRC’s transformation from a research center with an academic value system, to an innovation center focused on markets and products, valuing revenue and earnings growth, with an institutionalized innovation process. Among many contributions, these efforts led to a more than six-fold increase in the per capita patent disclosure generation rate at UTRC, the formation of two new business sub-segments and commercialization of four new products for UTC Power, and also provided Carrier Corporation, a UTC company, with a breakthrough commercial water heater technology that utilizes nearly 75% less energy than existing water heater technologies. This transformation and the results it yielded were highlighted with UTC's board of directors and ownership, and in invited keynote talks at open workshops on innovation methodology and process attended by leading US corporations.
Carl joined UTC through UTRC in 1993, where he held the dual positions of Director, Dynamic Systems & Controls, and Program Manager, Compression Systems. In 1996, he moved to Pratt & Whitney (P&W), a UTC company, as Director, Compression Systems Component Center, to lead compression systems engineering across all P&W product lines. In 1998, he became General Manager of the Compression Systems Module Center, adding manufacturing and supply chain to his engineering responsibilities, and co-leading their first ever organizational integration at P&W before moving to UTRC in 2000.
In his 11 year career with UTC, six teams under Carl’s leadership received George Mead Medals, UTC’s highest award for technical or scientific achievement, conferred annually to the most deserving team across UTC.
GE & Georgia Tech
Prior to joining UTC, Carl first worked at General Electric Global Research and later was an Associate Professor in the School of Aerospace Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. At Georgia Tech, he founded and led the multidisciplinary Laboratory for Identification & Control of Complex Highly Uncertain Systems, which became internationally recognized for its work in active control of turbomachinery aerodynamic and combustion instabilities, attracting significant financial support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Office of Naval Research (ONR), the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), GE Global Research, Rolls-Royce and Pratt & Whitney. This lab provided a unique learning environment for students, allowing them to merge theory, computation and experimentation across the disciplines of fluid dynamics, nonlinear dynamics and bifurcation theory, system identification, control theory, digital signal processing and computer-aided design. Through this work fundamental theoretical contributions were made in several areas, most notably robust control theory and system identification theory. In addition, a novel graduate course sequence in Propulsion Dynamics & Controls was developed and initiated.
Professional
Carl earned his B.S. in Physics, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, with a Systems & Controls concentration, from the Department of Electrical, Computer & Systems Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY. Carl holds four patents, with several others pending. He has published nearly 100 refereed articles in archive journals, conference proceedings, and books, with his top 3 archive journal publications cited more than 150 times each, his top 15 archive journal publications averaging nearly 50 citations each, and an average of nearly 25 citations each across all of his more than 35 archive journal publications (from Web of Science, excluding self-citations). Carl has also delivered numerous invited keynote talks on topics in innovation and systems, dynamics & controls. He has received the RPI Alan B. Dumont Prize, the Eta Kappa Nu Outstanding Young Electrical Engineer Award, the National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award, a Best Paper Presentation Award from the American Control Conference, the American Automatic Control Council Donald P. Eckman Award, a Best Paper Award from the Aircraft Engine Committee of the International Gas Turbine Institute, a Pratt & Whitney Dependability Award, two UTRC Outstanding Achievement Awards, the UTC George Mead Medal, and the International Federation of Automatic Control Nichols Medal. Finally, Carl was recently elected a Fellow by the International Federation of Automatic Control in its first year of conferring this designation.
Carl is a past member of the IEEE, ASME and AIAA. He has organized and chaired numerous conference and workshop sessions, and served as a reviewer for more than 15 archive journals. He has also served in numerous roles in professional societies and organizations, most notably: Chairman, IEEE Control Systems Society Technical Committee on Theory; Chairman, Hugo O. Schuck Award Subcommittee, American Automatic Control Council; Vice-Chairman, Invited Sessions, American Control Conference; Member, National Center for Advanced Technologies Roadmap Team for Air Breathing Propulsion; Member, Nichols Medal Award Subcommittee, International Federation of Automatic Control; Member, Program Committee, American Control Conference; and member, Bellman Award Subcommittee, American Automatic Control Council. Most recently, Carl has served extensively as a Panel Review Member for the NSF in the areas of: Partnerships for Innovation; Electronics Manufacturing (SBIR/STTR); Controls, Networks & Computational Intelligence; and Cybersystems.
Personal
Carl was born in Syracuse, NY in 1960, and currently resides in S. Glastonbury, CT with his wife, Sharon, and three children, Nicholas, Alyssa and Vincent. Carl can be contacted at drcarlnett AT cox DOT net.
