Rob Shelton

Summary

Rob is a globally recognized Silicon Valley-based adviser, author, and speaker on scaling and innovation excellence. Over the past forty years, he has been a trusted partner and adviser to hundreds of board members, CEOs, and senior executives at leading organizations and startups in Silicon Valley and worldwide. He is the founder of Scale Conundrum LLC and the Palo Alto Innovation Lab (https://www.paloaltoinnovationlab.com), a brand of Scale Conundrum. Rob is a board advisor, coach, program developer, and mentor for social enterprises providing for the under and unserved markets in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Rob is a scaling advisor and mentor at Harvard Innovation Lab and advisor at the Harvard Climate Circle. At EYEliance, he is an integral team member, methodology creator, and mentor to scale a proven optical services and products business model to low- and middle-income first-time customers in Africa, SE Asia, and Latin America. He is a Scaling Advisor at the Transformer Program, Fate Foundation (Nigeria). His management, organizational, and financial impact work includes enterprises involved in women’s health, optical care, mental health, climate change, sustainable agriculture, and improving the lives of under or un-served people. Rob is the methodology creator and co-founder of the Scaling and Replication program at Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley—a social impact leader for 25 years. He led the innovation consulting practice at PwC and was the founder and leader of PwC’s global financial service innovation program. Before that, he was a senior executive and led global innovation programs at Stanford Research Institute (SRI International) and Arthur D. Little (Cambridge, MA). Rob co-authored Making Innovation Work, a best-selling worldwide business book, in its second publication translated into ten languages. A featured speaker at the 2013 World Economic Forum, Rob has addressed and coached scores of leading companies worldwide regarding scaling, innovation, and integration of ES&G. His work has been highlighted in Bloomberg Businessweek, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Forbes Japan, Financial Times, BBC, strategy+business, CNN Financial News, Fast Company, Bloomberg Radio, and NPR. Rob was designated an Innovation Champion by the World Economic Forum and has been a speaker at the House of Commons and Stanford University, University of California, USC, Fudan University, MIT Media Labs, and Carnegie Mellon University.