Kaleidoscope® Innovation is making impressive changes, including moving its Cincinnati headquarters and refreshing its brand, to support its transformational vision and aggressive plans for future growth and capabilities expansion.
The consultancy is currently headquartered in downtown Cincinnati, but is moving later this year to the business district in Blue Ash, a suburb of Cincinnati. The new roughly 28,000-square-foot property will allow for substantial growth in both personnel and lab space that the company seeks as it sets its eyes on continued growth in the medical, consumer, industrial and transportation markets. Services range from research and design to engineering and software development.
In its nearly 30 years, it has developed relationships with leading global companies such as Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, Microsoft, Dell, Toshiba and Ford, providing consultancy-style support and onsite direct product development services to meet its business partners’ needs.
“If we want to continue to grow, which we do, we need to have the infrastructure that supports that,” said Robert Gill, vice president of product development. “We embarked on an extensive search for a specific type of space — one that would be in line with our cost structure but also allow us to scale as we continue to grow over the course of the coming years.”
While the company has already built facilities such as a wet lab, model shop, electromechanical lab and 3D printer lab in its current headquarters, the new building will allow for an expansion of these spaces as well as a more prominent dedicated space for the company’s virtual reality (VR) lab. With VR an increasingly important tool companies seek as part of their outsourced new product development offerings, Kaleidoscope is exploring using its VR capabilities for design reviews, for instance, as a value add for its business partners. The new facility will allow the organization to continue to invest in the right equipment, assets and individuals to grow those services.
The intent to scale, of course, includes plans to add more employees across functions.
“We want to grow the entire product development continuum,” said Gill. “So every functional area of that will grow as well.”
In addition to the move itself, Kaleidoscope Innovation has updated its branding, including its mission — “With our partners, we improve the human experience through meaningful innovation” and its vision — “To build relationships, products and experiences that transform life.”
Kaleidoscope Innovation considers relationships, both with business partners and internally for cross-functional collaboration, essential to the company’s vitality and growth, and the mission and vision both reflect the company’s long-held desire to improve the lives of end users while serving its business partners.
“Our updated branding reflects the long-held beliefs of our collective team,” said Matt Kornau, CEO. “We all know the importance of relationships — both for the viability and vitality of this company and for each project we work on with our business partners. As we create powerful solutions to real challenges in the product development space, we keep people at the center of everything that we do.”
Overall, the company hopes that both a new, expanded location and a refreshed brand identity will highlight that the company offers services through the full product development spectrum, particularly as it places an added emphasis on strengthening downstream capabilities.
“Today we provide complete product development from napkin sketch to manufacturing transfer,” said Gill. “Now it is simply a matter of building, strengthening and expanding on that.”
The combination of a new location and an enhanced brand identity are the beginnings of even greater things to come from a premier product development company with a mindset of constant growth and improvement.