Jeffrey Baumgartner

Jeffrey
Baumgartner

"The only true way to understand creativity and innovation is to live a varied life rich in experience. This provides you with a breadth of knowledge, experience and understanding which can be applied to all manner of problems."

Raised in the USA and UK and trained as a sculptor, Jeffrey Baumgartner has variously been a teacher, magazine columnist, entrepreneur, Internet pioneer, e-commerce consultant and organisational innovation expert. And he's chalked up this experience while living and working in three continents.

Bangkok: Internet Pioneer

Following several years as a teacher and commercial writer in the UK, USA, Portugal, Germany and Thailand, Jeffrey launched his first company in Bangkok in 1992. JPB Creative began life as a marketing communications firm providing Thai exporters with marketing materials to support their international sales activies.

By 1995, new technologies had grabbed Jeffrey's attention and he realised JPB Creative could continue to be one of many quality Marcoms companies in Southeast Asia - or it could become a pioneer in the then emerging commercial Internet and multimedia market. He chose the latter. JPB Creative was transformed and became the developer of many of Thailand's first web sites. His company also launched the first original Thai language infotainment CD ROM. At the same time, Jeffrey was penning a business advice column for Business Review, a pan-Asian business journal, as well as regular personality quizzes for Nation Junior, a popular bi-monthly for teenaged English learners in Thailand.

In 1996, he co-launched JPB Business Services with Panida Choknamchai. This second JPB company provided a range of services to foreign investors wishing to launch small and medium sized businesses in Thailand.

Brussels: E-Commerce

With the birth of son Alexander, Jeffrey decided the time had come to leave one of the world's most polluted cites for an environment more friendly to children. Fortunately, he was invited to bring his Internet and e-business experiences to the European Commission as an e-commerce expert. His mandate was to help the Commission promote electronic commerce to small and medium sized enterprises (SME) in the European Union.

He accepted the offer and spent over two years attending and organising conferences and workshops on all aspects of e-commerce. He also wrote numerous articles and booklets. His Dr. Ecommerce service, a web site providing advice to SMEs doing e-business in the EU, became a smash success - with write-ups in Time magazine, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Foreign Policy, ZDNet and a host of other journals. Even the Internet Society (ISOC) called him an e-commerce guru.

Following his stint at the European Commission, Jeffrey bought out Belgian consultancy Bwiti bvba and together with Ishida Taiseisha Inc designed innovative ebusiness tools - particularly for the European offices of Japanese Companies.

Organisational Innovation

Throughout his varied career path, Jeffrey retained his artist's interest in the creative process and developed a particular fascination with group dynamics in creativity and innovation. Based on his experience on three continents, Jeffrey built up a theory of organisational innovation based on creative problem solving (CPS) methodology. Central to his theory are frequent structured ideas campaigns focusing on business needs.

Using the ideas campaign model, Jeffrey - in collaboration with Czech software developers Ragtools - designed and developed a web based software tool initially code-named "IdeaBank". in 2004, IdeaBank became Jenni Idea Management Software Service.

In keeping with his belief in open collaboration on the Internet, Jeffrey openly discussed his organisational creativity and innovation theories with other experts on ValpoCella - a business creativity forum he launched and managed. Moreover, early beta implementations of Jenni were put on the web where the public was openly invited to explore, try out functions and provide feedback. Well over 100 people accepted Jeffrey's offer - and the resulting feedback lead to a drastic remodeling of Jenni, with an emphasis on simplicity and results.

Virtual Global Company

Bwiti, which operates under the jpb.com umbrella, is a virtual company with a tiny headquarters in the picturesque village of Erps-Kwerps in Flemish Belgium. Here, surrounded by farmers' fields and woodland, Jeffrey oversees a collection of international partners in the USA, UK, Australia, Brazil, Norway, Denmark and Belgium. Each of these partner companies packages Jenni together with their own value added services and provides their package to local clients. As a result, clients around the world get an internationally recognised idea management solution supported by local innovation experts who understand their needs and operate in the same time zone.

Nevertheless, Jeffrey is actively involved in supporting clients as well as business partners. And with clients in Australia, North America, Europe and Africa, this means that Jenni is being used around the clock, so it is not unusual to find Jeffrey on the telephone or e-mailing Jenni users or support people long after midnight or well before dawn.

In addition Jeffrey edits and writes much of Report 103, a highly popular bimonthly eJournal on Creativity, imagination, ideas and innovation in business. Report 103 has over 5000 subscribers including business leaders, managers, innovation consultants, students and others with an interest in creativity.

And a Life

Nevertheless, Jeffrey is actively involved in raising his two sons and has been known to reschedule business meetings to ensure he gets substantial time with his family.

Jeffrey also set up and manages the Imagination Club, an on-line community devoted to creativity. Members discuss creativity in business, share ideas, challenge each other and network to solve problems. Together with Andy Whittle Jeffrey also set up and manages the Brussels Imagination Club, a group that meets twice a month to hold experimental workshops and other events related to creativity. The Brussels Imagination Club includes over 200 members from dozens of countries.

In his spare time, Jeffrey enjoys travel, drawing, hiking and cycling.