Advanced Workshop & Practical Seminar:
Exemplary Team-Leadership Skills II

• Harvard-MIT Trained Leader: Meta-Innovation Scientist and Chief Architect, Harvard University Global System^™ • Serial Innovator: Manufacturing, Aerospace and Social Innovations and New Organizations in the Private, Public and NGO Sectors • Team Coach: Discovery, Scaling and Delivery of Innovation Processes, Products, Services and Platforms • Educator: Exemplary Team & Technical Leadership, Innovation Ecosystems, Strategy, Managment of Change, Principled Negotiation & Project Management

Education: A Harvard-MIT multidisciplinary-trained leader and 2012 Harvard Fellow, Advanced Leadership, and entrepreneurship alumnus of Harvard Business School (1997-1999), Alain Paul Martin studied advanced technology in France with internships at Peugeot, ARD National TV Network (Berlin), the University of Ottawa (Particle Physics) and Carleton University's Hydrodynamics Lab. He subsequently graduated in Commerce (Quantitative Methods) from Concordia University in Montreal; and acquired skills in system thinking and change management (MIT Sloan School, Gestalt Institute of Cleveland), and mediation and advanced negotiation for lawyers, at Harvard Law School from which he is certified to teach negotiation in corporations.

Current Mission: Advance meta-innovation: Alain Paul Martin leads PDI , a catalyst in principled leadership and collaborative innovation, thanks to a diverse team of scientists, engineers, economists, assistants and clients. The team distills the knowledge and best practices of innovation science, leadership, cognitive neuroscience, psychology, decarburization and system thinking to spearhead innovations, that maximize user value, top and bottom-line results and SDG/ESG impacts.

Mr. Martin is the Chief Architect, Harvard University Global System^™ (for which PDI is Harvard University's licensee). Alain led this System's design and a software version, used by Skanska (Finland, Germany, Norway, Sweden and the U.K.) to manage projects ($1M to multi-billions). The present System includes the Harvard^® Roadmap for Exemplary and Collaborative Innovation. This roadmap will serve as the outline and background document for the complete program. It facilitates the creation and scaling of competitive, ecologically sustainable and socially beneficial user-centered products.

Faculty Chair: Mr. Martin currently leads graduate courses and corporate webinars on exemplary team and technical leadership, the complete-innovation cycle and ecosystems, meta-innovation, and management of change and high-stake negotiations (bar certified), and stakeholders' empowerment and engagement (from issue incubation to fruition or graceful exit, including collective intelligence, strategic communication and strategic alliances) for scientists, engineers, policy makers, team leaders and graduate students, in English and French.

Prior to COVID19, he taught graduate M.Sc. courses; and delivered workshops at Bertelsmann, Boliden (Sweden), Cap-Gemini (Netherlands and U.K.), EON, Framingham University, The Engineering Advancement Association of Japan (ENAA), GE Jet Engines (U.S., France and Canada), Harvard University and the Ivy-League's Leadership Summit, MD Robotics, Mohammed VI Polytechnic University and OCP Group (Morocco), Ontario's Power Generation (Nuclear-Power Engineering), Teck (Applied Research & Technology), Textron Bell Helicopters, UN University (Tokyo), University of Quebec and governments (Canada, EU, U.S. and Latin America).

Track Record in Innovation and Management of Change

Alain Paul Martin is a meta-innovation scientist, with IT design, operations-research and management-science experience, a patent recipient (U.S, Canada and Japan), a serial social innovator, a manufacturing-innovation inventor at Peugeot and recipient of two aerospace awards from Bombardier-Canadair (now Airbus) for improving aircraft manufacturing (CAM).

Mr. Martin invented practical mechanisms to empower support staff; and bring synergy to innovation teamwork and master the finest details in project planning and progress control. The same mechanisms also permit international project teams to share and probe complex plans and progress reports, across language boundaries, both in small and large multi-billion dollar projects, including engineering and large-infrastructure programs.

In finance and banking, Desjardins' President John Harbour, praised Mr. Martin's role, as a 12-year main strategic advisor, in crafting “the vision and strategic direction of Desjardins”, a $75 billion financial institution, and “the world's 2nd strongest bank”, (Bloomberg's ranking at the time). In the general-insurance sector, Mr. Martin coached the executive team to turn Desjardins from a laggard into the industry's flagship through strategic innovations, leapfrogging Zurich and ING; and become “North-America's fastest-growing general insurer in 5 years”, quadrupling sales and raising profit tenfold (CEO's video in French at www.eharvard.org/2020/harbour.mp4).

In the public service, Mr. Martin co-founded the Canadian Food Inspection Agency with Dr. Brian Morrissey who led scientific research both at Fisheries & Oceans and Agriculture & Agri-Food Canada. He also teamed-up with Mr. John Harbour to reform the SAAQ, an agency saddled with a $489 million debt, fast-rising deaths and severe injuries, due to highway accidents. He coached the SAAQ strategic team whose decisions saved thousands of lives, in less than 5 years; reducing the death toll (-35%) and severe bodily-injury accidents (-43%), despite a 15% highway-traffic growth; while turning the $489 million debt into $20 million surplus. Mr. Harbour described Martin's 12-year contribution, to Desjardins and the SAAQ, in strategic thinking and innovation tools, in a video in French: www.eharvard.org/2020/harbour.mp4 (same as above hyperlink).

Mr. Martin advised two Canadian prime ministers on strategic policies. He also served as a non-partisan Executive Member of the Prime Minister's Committee on Government Reform. He led assignments (public-health, food security, bilateral trade, energy, mining and evaluation of passenger-inspection system and policies at airports), where complex risks and sensitive multi-stakeholder negotiations (regional, national and foreign governments, NGOs, corporate, union and First Nations' representatives and professional associations) were of paramount importance. He also advised the UNESCO's director general and authored “Overhauling the UNESCO and Strengthening Its Essence”. Early in his career, he directed infrastructural engineering projects in Africa (660km-highway engineering funded by the World Bank, 2800km microwave-communication infrastructure by CIDA).

During the 2019-2021 COVID pandemics, Mr. Martin chaired three international-foresight panels titled: “Incubating Antidotes to Exclusion, Disinformation and Inequality”, “Preparing for the New Pandemics: Lessons from Science and Policy” and “Sustainable Growth and Scaling through Innovation and Strategic Alliances”.

Alain Paul Martin has a deep commitment and an extensive experience in mentoring, training and coaching executive, administrative and presidential assistants and their leaders in Africa, Europe, Japan and North and Latin America, both the public and private sectors, NGOs and unions. He leads two intensive leadership workshops for executive and administrative assistants (description and video: www.eharvard.org/EA ). At the dawn of its inception, PDI led the world in inclusion and diversity, including gender equity by delivering the first graduate-level leadership-skills program for women. Fast forward 25 years, and armed with invaluable clients' experience in aerospace, banking, building and infrastructure, mining, defense and governments, PDI launched an ongoing initiative to make Harvard^® tools accessible (without compromising value) to everyone in our clients' project teams. As a result, PDI led the world again by delivering Advanced Workshops to enable Executive and Administrative Assistants to excel in decision-making, leadership, procurement negotiations and fully participate in team innovation, and project management (strategy formulation, scheduling, scarce-resource allocation, budgeting and progress control). Empowering executive assistants, with skills of lasting value, is not only fair, humane and dignified; but it is among the best evidence-based business investments yielding immediate returns, as indicated in these international participant-testimonies on Youtube.

More details, including recognition, awards and praise by clients, leading Fortune 500 corporate executives and scholars, at www.eharvard.org/martin, and defense leaders at www.eharvard.org/intelligence .

For more on Alain's innovative work in finance & banking, energy & mining, education, the public service and civil society, please refer to : C.V. in PDF format and detailed C.V.