#65: John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk)

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:00:00]:

I always say the impossible just takes a little longer. You know, it's funny. The definition of a really good patent, every patent think about this. Every patent was once considered impossible.

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:15]:

Right? Yeah.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:00:16]:

The airplane, the light ball I mean, think of all those great great inventions was once that considered impossible. So sometimes the wild idea, you say, you put it down, you look at it, and you say, oh, that's impossible. And then you then you think about it, and you say, well, if you did a, b, and c, maybe I could make it happen. And we've done that a lot in our career.

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:41]:

Let's discover the Cleveland entrepreneurial ecosystem. We are telling the stories of its entrepreneurs and those supporting them. Welcome to the Lay of the Land podcast where we are exploring what people are building in Cleveland. I am your host, Jeffrey Stern. And today, I had the honor of speaking with John Nottingham of Nottingham Spur. If you have ever used a Swiffer Sweepback, a Crest spin brush, a dirt devil, a Jacuzzi, a Little Tikes Playhouse, duct tape, Smart mouth, mouthwash, an Axe Bullet, a Sherwin Williams twist and pour paint container, and so on. You have used one of their inventions. Nottingham Sperk is a Cleveland based product innovation firm responsible for these worldwide product platforms and many more, And is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.

Jeffrey Stern [00:01:34]:

Since founding the company in 1972 on Case Western Reserve University's campus, John and his co founder and partner, John Spurk, have led their team of innovators to create hundreds of breakthrough products Resulting in over 1350 issued patents and counting, more than Thomas Edison. Although Nottinghamsburg started in a garage on the campus of Case Western, they now operate the 66,000 square foot Nottinghamsburg Innovation Center, a mile and Half from their original location. With teams dedicated to insights, product design, engineering, prototyping, digital design, and commercialization, The projects and ideas stay within those walls until market launch. This was a true pleasure of a conversation. Really amazing to hear John's stories and reflections on building some of the most ubiquitous products while building a firm with such a commitment to the creative process and to innovation. Please enjoy my conversation with John Nottingham. In prepping for this conversation today, it became very clear to me How much creativity and and innovation you you have and are contributing to this world, albeit a little behind the scenes, are outside of the main spotlight, if you will. And so very happy to to be a spotlight for for you here and and to shed a light on some of, I think the really incredible work that you've done here in Cleveland and and over the past 50 years and and continue to do so today.

Jeffrey Stern [00:03:09]:

So, thank you for Taking the time and coming on to share your story.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:03:13]:

Oh, thank you for having me.

Jeffrey Stern [00:03:14]:

Yeah. So I'd love if we could start if You just take us back and give us kind of the history here of how Nottingham Spur got started. I I know it transpired Right here in Cleveland, in a garage, perhaps on the campus of of Case Western. But maybe just take us through How it came to be and a little bit of that that founding

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:03:36]:

story. Well, I came to Cleveland to go to the Cleveland Institute of Arts Industrial Design Program. Originally, I went I went into design cars, and this it's one of the best car design schools in the country. John Sperk also came there at the same time. We met in line at registration in the freshman year. Interesting. And, we went through the 5 year program together. Originally, we competed with each other, and we decided, hey, we're we can do more together than we can competing, so we start working together right right at school.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:04:14]:

And when we graduated, we both assumed we'd get corporate job offers and move out of clay. And I got the job offer from General Motors, and John got the job offer from Hafi, and we turned it down. And we found a garage and started a company, and it's that

Jeffrey Stern [00:04:35]:

simple. Why? Why did you do that?

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:04:39]:

Well, we thought that as an independent innovation company, we could have a bigger effect than working with any whether it's General Motors or Huffy or any place. One company we felt we could work with lots of companies, and we never looked back. We started, and that's all we've ever done in our career.

Jeffrey Stern [00:04:59]:

So I think we'll we'll spend a lot of time in our conversation. You're talking about innovation, and I I think it's always helpful just, For for everyone tuning in and and for ourselves to have a a shared understanding of of what that actually means. And so I I'd love if you could just Describe what what innovation means to you.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:05:18]:

Because I'm a product designer, I started out as a product designer, the innovation in our world tends to be devices, but it goes beyond that. It goes to business model. It goes to a lot of things. But let's just talk about devices. And when you talk about devices, one of the things you think about is patents. Right? Mhmm. Yeah. So we have, when we work with companies, we have co created now 1350 patents, 1350.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:05:50]:

To give you a little perspective, another Ohioan by the name of Thomas Edison had a 1093, so we passed him a few years ago. A non interesting statistic when you talk about innovation. If you got a patent today, it's it starts with the number 10,000,000. But only 5% ever get commercialized. If you Google it, you look up, hey, how many how many what percentage of patents get commercialized? Is 5%. So what Nottingham's Burke has done over the years, we've created this process we call is vertically integrated innovation. Using that process, we've created 13 50 patents, 95% are commercialized. That's the difference.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:06:37]:

It's a huge

Jeffrey Stern [00:06:39]:

difference. Wow. Maybe if you can just unpack what Vertical innovation means what is entailed in that?

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:06:49]:

Okay. Well, let me start at the beginning. Everybody, I don't care who you are, if you're an innovator, right, you start at the beginning with a a, pinpoint, maybe an opportunity, something. You have an idea. Right? And everybody wants to commercialize it. Because if it's not commercialized, what good is it? But here's the problem. The reason only 5% of US patents get commercialized is innovation is typically done in silos. Think about it.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:07:18]:

There's a group that has an innovation. They do a creative session. They throw that over the over over the wall or over the silo into into market research. Let's have a market. Let's see if the market wants it. So the market market research will do a study, and they'll put that in a binder. Right? And they'll throw that over the silo into, a design group. And a design group will do some concepts, and they'll throw that over the wall to engineers will try to figure out if they can make this thing, and they'll engineer it, and they'll throw that over the wall to a prototyper who will do a proof of concept prototype.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:08:00]:

And they'll throw that over the wall back to the engineering to design it, for manufacturing, throw that over the wall, another step of concepting, another step step of prototyping, throw that over the wall to supply chain, throw that over the wall to digital design, and throw that over the wall to commercialization, and you wonder why 5% ever get commercialized, and there's none of the silos talk to each other very much. There's friction between the silos, and that's why it's only 5%. Now let me tell you the difference between for vertical innovation. It's vertically integrated innovation. If you look at our facility here, it was a it was a Christian Science Church. It's it's, 60,000 square feet. We have a vertically integrated staff, and physically, we're vertically integrated. We have 5 floors.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:08:53]:

This is the difference with vertical innovation. And I use the analogy of an SUV. Let's say we have an SUV at the starting point where everybody else starts, but we wanna end all the way down the road to commercialization. When we start with the SUV, we have a project manager who's driving the should be. But in the seats, we have somebody from insights, design, engineering, prototyping, digital design, supply chain commercialization, all in the SUV. We also have enough gas in the SUV to get from where we start all the way to the commercialization before we even start, and we have a GPS on how to get there. And we don't start unless all of those things are are decided upon, including decisions have to be made in 24 to 48 hours. I'm not gonna wait for 3 months for it to sue.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:09:49]:

Not gonna happen. So when we're all aligned, the project manager puts their foot on the gas, and we start going up the hill, up the hill, we go through we start with we start with we start with, insights. We go to market research. We go to we go to design, engineering, prototyping, back to engineering, proof of concept designed for manufacturing, supply chain, all the way to commercialization, and ninety five some of them get to commercialization. That's the difference. It's a huge

Jeffrey Stern [00:10:20]:

difference. When you were starting the firm, did Did you have a founding vision that painted a semblance of the picture of what the firm looks like today with 1300 patents, 95% commercialized, and this whole concept of vertical innovation, or or how how did you come to this philosophy?

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:10:36]:

We came to it by pure need. Okay? We had to prove ourselves. Right? So an early version of of vertical innovation had to be done. We were scrappy, we got there, and, we we really had some interesting times from from the very beginning. And sitting here today doing what I do today, it's not that different than what I did when we first started with those 2 people. We did everything. Now I've got, you know, 75 people that can do some other things that actually I can't do very well, and I'm I'm thrilled that they can do it, that I can't, especially specialized, you know, biomedical engineering and fluid dynamics and, prototyping and rapid prototyping and digital and and electronics, I have a smattering of all that, but I'm sure glad I have all these experts that can do seamlessly do all the stuff we need to have

Jeffrey Stern [00:11:33]:

done. What was, in your reflection, you know, the first big break of the firm?

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:11:39]:

Well so remember, here's John and John, freshly minted, find a garage. I've turned down General Motors. Okay? Right. So here we are in this garage that we're running in the Case Western Reserve campus. Right? So what do you do? You got no money. You got no contacts. You got no nothing. Right? So you got telephone.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:12:02]:

You're dialing for dollars. You know, you just go back and you're dialing, you're calling, you're writing letters. Nobody would give us the time of day except one. Long story short, we got we got a connection with a little company in Macedonia called Rotodyne. Now Rotodyne was a, a rotational molar. And I remember the guy, the president of the company said, you know, I walked in and he said, well, what do you know about rotational molding? I said, everything. Oh, okay. Then he's just started.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:12:36]:

Way back, I I said to John Spruk, I said, we gotta do real quick studies of on rotational mold. We learn we learn everything we could find about rotational mold. Let me tell you what it is. You have a steel, cast aluminum mold. You open it up. You pour in, what's typically polyethylene plastic. You close, you clamp it down, you start to rotate it, and you go into a heater, and it melts the plastic. The plastic coats the inside of the, aluminum, and then it goes into a chiller, and it and it chills it.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:13:09]:

And when you open it up, you have a hollow, plastic part, like a barrel, right, you know, an industrial, you know, these Jersey burials, the the the barricades they they, talk about in the streets, those are rotational molded, mostly industrial. Well, this company, Rotodyne, was doing bedpans for the hospital supply is rotationally molded bedpans. Now I'm not gonna call my parents that just paid to have me go 5 years to college, knowing that I've turned down General Motors to tell them I'm gonna do a bedpan, I'm not gonna make that call. I'm not. I'm not. But if you look at a bedpan and you put 4 wheels on it and a roof, it becomes a little car, doesn't it?

Jeffrey Stern [00:13:58]:

It does.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:13:58]:

Yeah. Yeah. And long story short, that became little types. Rotodyne changed their name to little types. That little $1,000,000 company grew to 600,000,000. We started doing I designed the logo for Little Tux by hand, and we did, you know, dozens and dozens and dozens of products and helped them grow. So that was probably the first big break.

Jeffrey Stern [00:14:25]:

Not too bad. That's incredible. One of the there there are a lot of strings I wanna pull on here, but Maybe to start. And I don't know if it is attention from your perspective, but new product development versus improving things that already exist. Right? Right, like the conventional wisdom that I always hear is to not reinvent the wheel. But it appears this is precisely what you have done and have done quite successfully for a very long

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:14:53]:

time. Paul, you know, most companies we that we interact with have a wonderful core business, their core product. That's their bread and butter. That's what they have to concentrate on. That's what happens that, you know, next quarter, they gotta make their numbers. They gotta deal with their customers. I get it. I've got the luxury of interacting with that with that company who's doing the core to do what's called adjacent and disruptive and breakthrough innovation, while they're doing their core.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:15:25]:

And best practice is that you should do both. Most companies aspire to do both, but the problem is they spend so much time on their core. On a Thursday, they'll go out and do a a creative session to do new things, everybody gets excited. They'll have a 100 ideas. They'll put it in a binder. And then on Friday, they come back to work, and their their their customer had a hiccup, and everybody gets sucked back into the core. I've got the luxury in our group to think outside that proverbial box and do something different. And that's what we've done our whole career.

Jeffrey Stern [00:16:04]:

How do you maintain that culture of and commitment to innovation? Because from afar, I think one of the pitfalls of standing companies is a general complacency that kind of sits in over time where The it's that over maybe commitment to focus on the core, where they lose that culture of innovation that maybe Spurred them to the peaks that many of those companies now try and build moats around, and it's it's now about preventing others from ascending rather than, like, trying to continue that climb. So how have you, both internally as a company, and also with the clients that you work with, foster this culture of innovation Where you challenge

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:16:47]:

yourself. It starts with the environment itself. You know, when we when we were outgrowing our facilities, when we were looking, for a new new place, rather than look for a loft or an office building or an industrial park, we found a church, of all things, why would you do that? Well, church architecture are designed for inspiration. Right, is designed to think beyond yourself. When you go into a church, you're just like, Oh my God. You look at the high ceiling. In our case, you look at our Rotonda, our Oculus, you wanna do something great. You really do in that environment.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:17:25]:

And then you encourage you encourage your staff to always be thinking about new things, thinking about the customer, thinking about creating new things and build a culture that you're always questioning. And this whole vertical innovation idea means that everybody everybody works as a unit. You have a project manager, but you but the minute the they're they're talking to designers and engineers and insights and biomedical engineers, and all those those people that are that are are going to have one goal, that goal is commercialization. We're all working to the goal all the time, every time. The other thing is most of our people are working on 2 or 3 projects at the same time. So when one time you're waiting for a decision, you you you shift to another, and they're all it's it's very organic. There there are groups there's teams of you might be on 1 team for 1 project, then another team on another project, you're always mixing it up. It's always a variety.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:18:30]:

You're always doing stuff. Well, one of the things we don't do is get bored. There's boredom is not around for sure. Sometimes I say I skip in in the morning and I crawl out at night. That's how I feel. I'm physically and mentally exhausted by the end of the day. Now you caught me you caught me at the end of the day. I'm still doing okay, but I'll crawl out of here when I'm done.

Jeffrey Stern [00:18:54]:

How does the the creative process work? I think it would be really interesting to hear from like soups to nuts. Take us through an innovation process. What does each step kind of look like? And what are what are the kinds of questions that that you're asking along the way?

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:19:12]:

Well, early on okay? Here's the thing. You gotta start with the customer. It's not I'm not designing a product for me necessarily. I'm designing for some customer. So we bring our customers into our place, and we and we talk to them. What is your desires? What are your pain points? What are your issues? You know, look at the products you have in front of you. Are they satisfying you, or is there something else? So we start there. We start there really looking at those pain points, and then we have a series of what we call creative sessions.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:19:47]:

1 session is, I call it the, diverging session. You start with that pain point, start with the opportunity. Now you diverge what what in in ideas that I call mild to wild. Now mild is, you know, here's a product, here's an incremental improvement. Okay. I get that. Now once I've done that, what is the most wild thing you can think of? Forget the technology. Forget if it could even be done.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:20:19]:

If you could just have any wave your magic wand, and you could create the most wild thing you could, put it down, and let's see that. Now you got mild to wild and everything in between. And now you have 27 different ideas in between. So that's diverging. And you and if if you're not careful, you'll have hundreds and hundreds of ideas. Well, then you're exhausted. You know? You're crawling out. You're exhausted.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:20:44]:

The team is exhausted. Oh, by the way, there's no bad ideas. You're in a group. You're thinking thoughts. Nobody can shoot down anybody's ideas. Everybody if if it's worth saying or putting down or or identifying, it's a good idea. There's no bad ideas in that session, in the diverging session, you want as many ideas as possible. You don't care how practical you are.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:21:09]:

You don't care. It's levitating, it's, it's augmented reality. Whatever it is, you put it down. Now, then you're done. Alright? You you you stop. The next session, you revisit it. Now you go to the convergent session. Now you can't do 500 ideas.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:21:32]:

You're gonna do 3. So how do you make it down to 3? Well, you have you have a funneling process that gets it down to the 3 best, and then you you go from there. So that's kind that's kinda how you you get these, you get the creative process diverging, converging.

Jeffrey Stern [00:21:52]:

How often is the wildest idea the best idea?

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:21:56]:

You know what? Every once in a while, the wildest idea is the one that gets there. You know, you well, I always say the impossible just takes a little longer. You know, it's funny. The definition of a really good patent, every patent think about this. Every patent was once considered impossible.

Jeffrey Stern [00:22:15]:

Right? Yeah.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:22:16]:

The airplane, the light ball I mean, think of all those great path great inventions was once that considered impossible. So sometimes the wild idea, you say, you put it down, you look at it, and you say, oh, that's impossible. And then you then you think about it, and you say, well, if you did a, b, and c, maybe I could make it happen. And we've done that a lot in our career. I'll tell you one way. I'll tell you one way we did. Sure. So we looked at electric toothbrushes.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:22:49]:

All electric toothbrushes at the time we looked at, Sonicare and others, for $50, $100. So let's go mild or wild. And long story short, we said, what if we could commercialize a really great electric toothbrush for $5 retail. Impossible.

Jeffrey Stern [00:23:11]:

Right? At

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:23:11]:

the time. Because we went to the customer, and we found that a critical price wall was $5 retail. Now what does that mean? Well, the retailers sell it for $5, but the retailer wants to pay half, two fifty. And we wanted to have a factory cost of 1.25. Everybody wants a 50% markup. So I go back to my engineers, and I say, we're gonna do this toothbrush, but we gotta land we gotta have this made for for, you know, a buck 25. Now they're looking at me like I'm cross eyed. You can't do that.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:23:49]:

Why not? Well, Let's do the bill of materials. Let's look at the motor. Okay? Well, what does a motor cost? Well, they look in their catalog, and they get a in the Babuchi Motors, you know, a dollar 50. You wanna take this from dollar 25? Well, how are you gonna do that? Well, let's look at the Babuchi Motor. Let's take it apart. Why is it so expensive? It's the copper. We don't need that much copper to move a bristle. Let's just wind just enough copper.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:24:19]:

Let's do our own motor and put it back together. We went to a motor manufacturer, and we said, good news. We wanna buy a 1000000 motors for 14¢. And they looked at us cross eyed, and they handed it out. We they figured it out. They we gave we got motors 14¢. What's the next what's the next, you know, most costly thing? It's the batteries. A batteries cost? What does a branded alkaline battery cost? Wholesale.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:24:47]:

18.18¢ at the time. We did a reverse Internet auction. We got the price down to 8.5¢. Mhmm. And we we did that for for the switch, for the bristles, for everything, we ended up landing this thing for a dollar 25. We launched a product. We started a company called the Doctor. John Spinbrush company I'm John, and John's Birk is John, and John Oshier is John, and, you know, Larry Blaustein got outvoted.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:25:14]:

And, we start a company called Doctor. John's Spinbrush Company, and we invented the best selling toothbrush in the world. We have sold almost a 1,000,000,000 of them. We sold the company to Procter and Gamble. They put the Kress name on it. They sold hundreds of of of millions of units. And when they acquired Oral B, they sold that to, Arm and Hammer, now it's the Arm and Hammer Spinbrush, you could go to any drugstore, any store in the world, and buy a spin brush, and I encourage all the people listening in to go buy a spin brush. It's the greatest product, and it's still like $7.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:25:53]:

So that's the impossible. It's impossible to do a $5 electric toothbrush and tell it isn't. You see what I'm

Jeffrey Stern [00:26:00]:

saying? I do see what you're saying. How often do you get pushback against pushing the boundary of what people think is impossible? Like, how many of the ideas that came since then have have involved someone saying, Ah, it it can't be done?

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:26:18]:

See, part of the vertical innovation process is having choices. Right? So you have options. And you start you start going you know, you you diverge, converge, diverge, converge, and you always get to a solution 95% of the time. I don't have that problem because we always have a process to get around

Jeffrey Stern [00:26:42]:

it. What does the decision making process look like as you're Filtering, you know, the ideas down to a smaller convergence set. How much of it is is your own gut and intuition? How much of it is Viable and measurable intangibles, how do you balance these things?

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:26:58]:

You know, it all depends on on the problem you're solving. I mean, sometimes it's a technological problem, and you have to have the engineers or you have to have subject matter experts coming in and really help you. It really depends. I mean, we're doing a lot of right now, we're doing a lot of medical devices, and medical devices have to I mean, we're saving lives. We're literally saving lives with some of these things. It's awesome. We're doing clinical trials. We're doing I mean, you know, it's it's all part of that process.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:27:27]:

And, you know, you just it's just get it done. You just grind it up, get it done, and commercialize 95% of

Jeffrey Stern [00:27:35]:

How do you, I guess, deal with with failed innovations or or projects that didn't meet the intended outcome?

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:27:44]:

Well, okay. Failure is built into the system. It's part of the vetting process. By the time you get to commercialization, those failures are way back down, in the beginning I mean, the early concepts, the early things, you know, they try them, they fail, they move. But once you get through the vertical innovation process, the winners succeed. And, again, you can't argue with 95%.

Jeffrey Stern [00:28:11]:

And so what what kind of allows you to persist through the time that it takes To arrive at the successful outcome of the vertical innovation process. Like, as a firm, what are the kind of guardrails that, And maybe it's like you have the financial runway to be able to take some some risks and and and go through that process. But, How have you thought about what allows you to to surmount those failures along the way and achieve that level of success?

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:28:42]:

It's all part of it. So, you know, a vertical innovation project is typically 12 to 18 months. And if it's a medical product because of, you know, clinical trial, I mean, it can extend further. But, we know what it takes. I mean, we know how long it takes. We know along the way, we're gonna have fits and starts, and and we'll have challenges, we'll have obstacles to jump over. We just meet those. I mean, we just we just do it.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:29:09]:

And, where we start, where we end up, sometimes where we end up is different than what we started, because we went down some different paths and had some different challenges or opportunities we came came along, refined a new technology, whatever it is, we get there. And we get there, and we get the commercialization. And when you get to commercialization, you have a real product in a real person's hand that are paying real money could create real business, and that's that's that's what it's all about.

Jeffrey Stern [00:29:38]:

As you reflect on the last 50 years of of the firm. What what are the things that you have learned and and believe today that, you didn't anticipate? Just having been involved in Innovation specifically, technologically, the world has really changed quite drastically in that time. So I'm curious, like, what are the things that Surprised you, that you didn't see coming and just some reflections on the journey.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:30:05]:

Yeah. It's funny. It almost seems like my career has been a vertical innovation process. I mean, I've you know, it's changed. It's evolved. It's gone on. It's not a whole lot my brain is not a whole lot different when I started till today, I'm still doing the same things. I'm still on I'm still, you know, solving people's problems, trying to, you know, innovate and and move forward.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:30:29]:

It doesn't seem that much different. I mean, I've learned, but it's part of that process. It's it's incremental. I I come in every day, go out every day, and I've I learn some listen. I learn something every single day when I'm here, including today.

Jeffrey Stern [00:30:45]:

Yeah. When you think about the future of of the firm and just how much you've accomplished, you know, on Par with with Edison's output in some capacities and a better commercialization rate. Like, how do you think about The longevity of of the nature of your doing and kind of the the culture of the firm that that will allow that innovation to continue going forward. And on top of that, I'm just curious, like, what what are you most excited about thinking about the the

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:31:14]:

future? Well, you know, is getting more technical. It's getting more technological. There the the technologies we're using are are more advanced. But, you know, that's happened my whole career. I mean, we've had a you know? Right. It's it's just gone that way. What it does do is allows us to, to affect more people and really is more digital, is more connected, is more broad, but it doesn't stop. It doesn't stop.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:31:43]:

It keeps on going. It's relentless. It's it's absolutely relentless. And the more people come in, we're hiring some unbelievable talent. Unbelievable, pal. Both homegrown. Some we have a great internship program with some of the engineers and design schools, what we we recruit from, experienced people from all over the country, frankly. And, they're coming here.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:32:06]:

They're they're assimilating into our program innovation process, they think, you know, they died when they happened because it's so cool to kinda think about. It's just it's just it's I am fascinated. You know, I jump in the car, I'm still thinking about stuff. I wake up in the morning, I'm still thinking about stuff. My wife says, you know, what are you doing? What are you doing thinking about that? But it's it's who I am. You know, you live it. And it's who I am. It's just what I do all day, every day.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:32:36]:

It doesn't stop. I'm on vacation. I'm still thinking about it. It's it's what I

Jeffrey Stern [00:32:42]:

do. How much of what You've established with this concept of vertical innovation is reproducible elsewhere. Do do you, how do you think about competition in in that way? Or is it a philosophy that that more people should just be practicing? And there should be more of it.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:33:00]:

You know, I tell anybody who will listen, I've I've made you know, I've been I've I have a a TED talk that I've done on it. I've, written articles. I've done people come in here, I tell them, listen, this is our secret sauce. Right? You know what? It's it's easy to say it's hard to do. Most companies that I know of and there's some great companies out there, let me tell you. But most of them do a part of vertical innovation. Some of them do really good on the front end design concept and everybody else. Some others do really good well on the back end, supply chain and all that other stuff, I have never seen anybody do it from start from beginning to end the way we do it.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:33:45]:

It just I've I've never seen it set up. Oh, I've sent it once, just once, and we're just kinda gave you the, inspiration of this, Pixar Studios. I you know, about 20 or 30, Now 20 years ago, yeah, maybe a little longer. I had the benefit of going through Pixar. There's a great book written. I think it's called Innovation Inc, about Pixar. You know, Steve Jobs, that was his that was his baby. They in fact, they call it the they call it the Steve Jobs building in San Francisco.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:34:20]:

And what is it? Well, it is a an atrium. They'll they'll tell you about this. There there's an atrium in the center. Okay? And they put the restrooms on one side. They put the cafeteria on the other side. They stack the floors around it. They put all you know, in Pixar, they have the writers, the animators, and the voiceover. Everybody is in that building.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:34:42]:

And Steve Jobs talked about this. Is designed that during the day, people bump into each other in the hallway, in that atrium and on purpose. And because creativity is a mix of formal sessions and informal sessions. And they all work together, and they are vertically integrated. They do as close to vertical innovation as I've ever seen any company, and look at their track record. I mean, I never saw the statistics, but I'll bet you, 95% of their movies are successful. And I don't know any other company that you can say that. So that's the 1 benchmark that I'll give

Jeffrey Stern [00:35:24]:

you. So If the secret sauce ultimately then is in the the execution of vertical innovation, what what makes it so difficult to to emulate in its entirety?

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:35:34]:

Well, first of all, you have to have the environment. And after I saw Pixar, we found this this church that has a central, a central rotunda stackboards around, we bump into each other during the day. Does this sound familiar? We actually physically designed it around the Pixar environment. So that's 1. And then you have to have a staff that's diverse, diverse in culture, diverse in what you can do, your background and every everything else, you put them all together vertically integrated, and you have to you have to do it in a vertically integrated way. I just haven't seen anybody do it. Maybe they will, you know, but Yeah. I've been working on it for decades, and, you know, I'm still I'm still tweaking it.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:36:21]:

So, you know, let them catch up.

Jeffrey Stern [00:36:24]:

I I do have a follow-up on that. I'm just curious your perspective. I mean, obviously, in the last 2 years, societally, we've been pushed a little bit in a direction where Remote is more of an option, maybe even prescribed in some situations. And I I personally have found it A little difficult to to have that kind of unplanned interaction with people at work where The nature of hopping on a Zoom call is very transactional. How have you navigated that as a company? And and what are what are your thoughts on On kind of remote work.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:37:00]:

Well, here. So we make things, right? We're doing, we're doing prototype. You cannot phone in a prototype. Let me tell you. Right. But during the entire during the entire pandemic, the majority of us were here, the ones that have to build the prototypes to do this kind of thing in interaction, most of our staff was here because, first of all, we were doing we were doing medical device, we're doing we've had we've had the FDA give us breakthrough status in some of these medical devices. We're fast tracking medical devices through the pandemic, some of which are solving the pandemic issues I wish I could talk to you about. So we didn't stop.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:37:41]:

We were here. Now, this some of the staff through the pandemic that you know, and insights and other things, you know, they they work some some work remotely or some hybrid, you know, back and forth. The vast majority were here, including me.

Jeffrey Stern [00:37:58]:

And then your your thoughts on if you can have that environment in a remote world. Just the that level of creativity and that comes from those unplanned

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:38:09]:

interactions. Well, you know, it it's like we we talked about. You know, this this was sort of leveled on us. But, you know, we have used, you know, these Zoom calls and other things. And, I'm finding that in some cases, we'll be in 2 parts of this building, and we'll just do a Zoom call rather than go to a conference room. So this hybrid thing you know, this hybrid thing is is not all bad. You know, there's some there's some efficiencies built into it. We're doing, we, you know, we have a number of venture companies that we cofounded, we are, on the board of directors in a lot of these things.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:38:44]:

And our board meetings rather than you know, we've got 1 company in, on the West Coast. And 4 times a year, we'd have to, you know, fly out there and get hotel rooms and go to the board meeting. Well, now, you know, maybe 2 or 3 of those board meetings will will be right like this, right on Zoom. You know, as nice as it is to be there, you know, it's nice to have this this thing. So we're listen. This is part of our system. Hey. Listen.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:39:09]:

If if Zoom calls are efficient and so forth, Hey, build it into the system. I don't

Jeffrey Stern [00:39:15]:

care. How how often are those ideas homegrown, I guess, emerging from within the Firm versus from a client that you're working with. Like, how often are you spinning up companies versus bringing in customers?

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:39:30]:

You know, the vast majority are customers. When people say, well, do people come to you with an idea or whatever? You know, it's, there's no there's everyone's different. Most of them, we have a client partner. Even in the the companies we start, we usually have a private equity or my office that where we have, you know, we we combine, you know, the funding with the with the whole vertical innovation process. And, it it's usually collaborative some way. It you know, we don't have all the answers. We really don't. But we we collaborate with our client partners, and I don't care where the idea comes from.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:40:08]:

And when we apply for the patents, the true inventors who run that patent, sometimes it's some of us, sometimes it's one of our client partners, we put on you know, we'll have, you know, 2 or 3 or 4 and of veterans on each patent. And I don't really care as long as we get the patent going in the right direction.

Jeffrey Stern [00:40:27]:

I I'd love if you could just take us through maybe a few of your other favorite projects, most impactful that that you've worked on.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:40:36]:

Oh my. I mean, there's so many of them. There's I I If you go to our Thousands. Go to our website, take a look. I mean, there are dozens and dozens and dozens, you know, from medical devices to consumer products to industrial products, the process is the same, in a way. Gosh, the medical products are game changing. We're doing a a blood testing device. We've licensed we've licensed the original technology from Case Western Reserve.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:41:06]:

We found a group of scientists there, brilliant, that used physics instead of chemistry to test blood. What does that mean? Well, you don't have to get antigens from China. Has a solid state. You're using a laser. So when we got it, it it was the size of a conference room. It used gold to, to use on their electronics. I mean, it was it worked. It proved feasibility, but it was impractical at that point.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:41:34]:

We had to take it from the conference table sized thing to a handheld device. We have a little thing called a clot chip. We got it down to $3 cost. You have a drop of blood, you whip the blood, you stick it in our handheld machine, and you find out digitally whether your blood is too thick or too thin. So when you're taking blood thinners, like Eliquis, Pradaxa, or Xarelto, you wanna know if your blood is if you're if you're taking too much, you're gonna bleed out. If you take don't take enough, you're gonna have a, you're gonna have a a stroke or a clot. And so these are things that are saving lives. We we were we were given we were given fast track status from the FDA.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:42:21]:

Everybody's excited about this thing. It's really gonna change blood testing in the world. I mean, that's just one of 20 things I can talk about.

Jeffrey Stern [00:42:31]:

Right.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:42:31]:

Right. Through the pandemic, we we we vet we, start with another technology from, Cornell. It was test done in Cornell that is looking at at, disinfection. Hospital acquired infection is a huge problem in hospitals. 2 a half 1000000 people get an infection in a hospital that they didn't have when they walked in. A 100000 people die of hospital acquired infection, 3 times the amount of auto

Jeffrey Stern [00:43:01]:

accidents. Wow. That is that is alarming.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:43:04]:

It's it's very alarming. Yeah. It's it's like a, you know, a jumbo jet crashing every week. I mean, it's horrible. Anyway Jeez. So one of the things, if you take a look at a cell phone, everybody that works in the hospital brings a cell phone in and uses a cell phone and takes it home. Well, what if you have C. Diff on that cell phone? What if you have COVID on that cell phone? How do you disinfect it? Well, I'll tell you what the hospitals are doing today.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:43:32]:

You take a tub of, wipes, disinfecting wipes, you pull the wipes out, and you gotta rub this thing for 4 minutes. That's what you do. Now how many people do you think do it? 4%. 1%.

Jeffrey Stern [00:43:45]:

Right? That's a that's more than most attention spans these days.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:43:49]:

Okay. So our technology is is now the size of a microwave, and it's got a little tub of hydrogen peroxide combined with cold plasma of technology, you put your cell phone in, you close the door 5 to 10 minutes, it's totally disinfected, doesn't harm the electronics, doesn't harm the environment. You can put your stethoscope in, your your name tag, your your pen. Anything that might get infected, you put it in there. It saves each one of these little tubs of hydrogen peroxide, saves 44 canisters and wipes that are not biodegradable, that are gonna land up in landfills. That's just got just a couple weeks ago, got EPA approval. As soon as we got EPA approval, we had 27 hospital systems order these things. I mean, this is gonna change disinfection in the world.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:44:45]:

Think about it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:46]:

Yeah. No. It's it's incredible.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:44:49]:

Another technology we started again, these are companies we cofounded. Another company. Do you ever know anybody with a with a concussion? Sure. Okay. The therapy for concussion first of all, there isn't any therapy other than sit in a room for 30 days. That's that's what you're supposed to inactivity for 30 days. We have a device that we've designed. We're going through a large clinical trial right now.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:45:12]:

It's called therapy around your carotid artery and around your head. It's a little device that cools down the brain. So let's let's say you have a you have a concussion go off off the football field. The trainer puts this on for 30 minutes. Okay? And then within 48 hours, puts another 30 minute session, and the recovery is 3 days, not 30 days. Wow. This will be the fur this summer, this will be the 1st FDA approved therapy for concussions in the world. It will be standard of care for concussions, it'll be best practice for concussions in the world.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:45:50]:

You will hear about it. So those are 3 of my 20 things I could talk about.

Jeffrey Stern [00:45:55]:

Yeah. No. Thank you for for sharing

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:45:57]:

those. Not too shabby.

Jeffrey Stern [00:46:00]:

Are are you drawn to any industries more So than others, or is it more just this love of the process

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:46:08]:

and You know, I love the process. I love solving problems. We started out in sooner. We've migrated very heavily into medical. We've got biomedical engineers that'll you know, are brilliant. We're doing a lot of industrial things, really, you know, but, you know, being grounded in consumer what is a consumer? You have to be innovative, you have to be low cost, and you have to you have to please the customer. Well, medical's the same way. Really, industrial's the same way.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:46:40]:

Everybody's got a customer. So it really doesn't matter the industry. It matters, you know, the opportunity and, the wherewithal to do it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:46:50]:

Well, I wanna maybe bookend our our conversation here. I have a closing question for everyone, but I I also just wanna kind of ask if Any any other reflections or parting wisdom, that that you have for for the audience or just just last on the journey so far?

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:47:07]:

Well, you know, I'm just excited about the next 50 years. Okay? I I don't know how how long I'll be able to, participate in the next 50 years as long as I could. Right? But if I've seen all this in the last 50 years, what's gonna happen in the next 50 years? Holy cow. But we are set up to do some really, really, really wonderful

Jeffrey Stern [00:47:28]:

things. That's very exciting. And I know you're you're doing a lot of work here in Cleveland as well. Oh, yeah. You have the the EUI Innovation Hub and things of that nature. And if you if you'd like to speak to that, I would love to hear a little bit about that Before we we wrap up.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:47:42]:

No. You know what? I love being in Cleveland because we're, you know, we're not Silicon Valley, but we're a manufacturing valley. We've got a great legacy of manufacturing. And right now, most factories are what we call factory 3.0. In the next 10 years, there'll be 2 types of factories. Ones that'll go to 4.0, in other word, digitization, digital twin, and and connectivity of all their all their machines in the factory, or they'll be out of business. They'll be 1 or the other. And we are we have companies every day coming in here talking about, you know, how how can we get to that next level? And you don't you don't have to reinvent the wheel.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:48:29]:

You can take your old equipment, and and you can digitize it. You can you can put you can pair it with with, with with connectivity, and you can do it right now. You don't have to wipe out your factory to go to, you know, brand new thing, so we're working with a lot of people, and it makes sense to be a clue. It doesn't we we would never be at Silicon Valley. First of all, the cost of living is too high. Second of all, they don't have the supply chain. They don't have the infrastructure that we haven't played on. So it's perfect to be included.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:49:02]:

I wouldn't be anywhere

Jeffrey Stern [00:49:04]:

else. Perfect segue for our closing question, which is Not necessarily for your favorite thing in Cleveland, but for something that other people may not know about, a hidden gem.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:49:14]:

You know what? I'm gonna say it sounds too obvious, but I'm gonna say it anyway. That I think the Cleveland Clinic, I'll tell you why. I'm on the board I've been on the board of the Cleveland Clinic for 20 years, and it's world class. I mean, there is nothing better than the Cleveland Clinic. It's so good, it's gonna get better. I just had a board meeting yesterday, and we're gonna open up in London. The Abu Dhabi is just going great facility, through California, Las Vegas. I mean, we're just starting.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:49:47]:

I mean, there's just the Cleveland Clinic is so good. It's gonna it's gonna change health care more than people think. Is on steroids. That's that's my and it's not it's not like a hidden gem. It's it's like

Jeffrey Stern [00:50:01]:

No. Yeah. The bar is already very high for the clinic.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:50:04]:

I'm saying that it's that it's still hidden. You know, there's way, way bigger the mountains to climb for the cliff and crack, we benchmarked that. It's best practice. It's best in the world, and I'm just thrilled to be on a world class board.

Jeffrey Stern [00:50:18]:

Amazing. Well, John, I, again, really appreciate you coming on and and sharing your story today. It's Fascinating to hear about the the work you're doing and and the process. So thank you very much.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:50:30]:

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Jeffrey Stern [00:50:42]:

Awesome. Well, thank you again, John.

John Nottingham (Nottingham Spirk) [00:50:44]:

Okay. Thank you. Take care.

Jeffrey Stern [00:50:48]:

That's all for this week. Thank you for listening. We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's show. So if you have any feedback, please send over an email to jeffrey@layoftheland.fm or find us on Twitter at podlayoftheland or at @sternjefe, j e f e. If you or someone you know would make a good guest for our show, please reach out as well and let Snow. And if you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or on your preferred podcast player. Your support goes a long way to help us spread the word and continue to bring the Cleveland founders and builders we love having on the show. We'll be back here next week at the same time to map more of the land.