about
Ed Essey
If you’re like most of my readers, you commit each day to help your organization grow its culture to achieve breakthrough success. This world you live in is fast and exciting, and you thrive in it. Maybe you lead an innovation or incubation program, maybe you’re creating a new product that will change the world, or maybe you want your team to work in a better way. Though, you may feel at a loss in finding others to connect with on your journey. So, when you find somebody else doing work like you, you get immersed in the discussion. Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen enough.
Until now, you didn’t know where to go.
Here you will meet the people doing this work. They create and transform cultures. They lead innovation. Their products and services delight people. They hone their craft. Join them in delivering amazing and groundbreaking products and businesses that people will love.
I’ve been there, too.
I know what it feels like to be on a mission without a tribe, to be in that place where you’re creating something for the first time.
My whole career, I’ve focused on creating new things at startups and in the enterprise. And I’ve focused on helping people do this well and create programs so they’d know where to take their idea forward.
I love sharing these lessons with you so you can focus your creativity on delighting people, instead of reinventing the wheel.
I’ll give you the wheels, you put your foot on the gas!
What to Expect
On this site, I connect insights to actionable advice, backed by real examples.
I provide a tight, applicable nugget every week with a larger deeper topic each month.
Since I coach a lot of teams, hear thousands of pitches, read 5-15 books/month, and reflect to spot patterns and outliers–sometimes a new theory emerges with tangible applications.
Subscribe to the newsletter to ensure you don’t miss those.
My Story
Growing up, I always had a fascination with the ways things work, creating new things, applying art, and learning from anything I could get my hands on.
My childhood focus, from the age of 6 when I first saw the legal robot competition on TV, was to go to MIT. Fortunately, they accepted me, since it was the only school I applied to. After a few years of interning at startups and discussing building new ideas with my friends and classmates, I graduated with a degree in Computer Science and Engineering (Course 6-2).
This was 2001, when the markets crashed — think DotCom Bubble bursting and the Fall of Enron. 3 startup offers in a row were rescinded as the companies went under. One of them literally vacated their office space between my first day of work and my 3 day stint of jury duty.
I ended up at an MIT cliché: a 5-guys-in-a-basement startup. Soon, our angel seed funding ran out. Then we timed our big VC investment push and product press release on September 11, 2001. Ouch.
After that, the 5 of us celebrated when each person landed a job at a company that actually had money to pay us. For me, that was Microsoft.
I never imagined myself at Microsoft. Our company has an annual poll that asks how long we expect to stay at Microsoft. I have checked the “Less than 2 years” box 17 years in a row. The company keeps changing and staying fascinating.
During my career, I’ve researched AI, developed intelligent agent-based systems, and democratized parallel computing. I have led company-wide change management programs in innovation, design-thinking, and agile methodologies that have helped over 25,000 employees earn raving fans for their products. I founded the Garage Experimental Outlet that has delivered nearly 100 new and exciting projects to users and the Garage Intrapreneurs program that helps employees with brilliant ideas create their own dream jobs building the businesses they’re passionate about.
My Personal Life
I live in Seattle with my two perfect and precious children. They constantly teach me how to be a better person and remind me of the wonder in all things great and small.
Our family values are to be gentle, patient, and kind. And, my personal values are growth, passion, and connection.
In my free time I enjoy making music, cocktails, and meals for people I care about. When alone, I focus on fitness, reading, and mindfulness. And to this end, I believe technology has the under-tapped potential of helping us become wiser.
Now, it's your turn.
Every resource on this site was created with you in mind. Every article and tool is shared to help innovative people like you get your products, programs, and culture humming as cheerily as possible.
To ensure you don’t miss a thing, why not subscribe? It is quick, easy, and you can unsubscribe at any time.
I hope that you join me.
Best, Ed Essey