About

Matt Hunt is a CEO & Founder of strategy and innovation consulting firm Stanford & Griggs, LLC. Matt is also a writer, blogger, and speaker on leadership, innovation, and the role of failure. With over 20 years of business and technology experience he has a demonstrated excellence in business strategy, innovation, and leadership development with large companies, small companies and non-profit organizations.

Matt Hunt began his career as a technologist and was an applications programmer and Internet technology consultant as he finished his undergraduate degree in Management Information Systems from the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management. It was while he was at the University of Minnesota that Matt first stepped into the forefront of Internet technology having been a pioneer in launching one of the school’s first web servers.

While completing his MBA degree, Matt set out to work on Wall Street for Morgan Stanley as an IT associate where he helped to lead a team of MBAs to catalog and report the firm’s IT risk exposure. After completing his degree he returned to Morgan Stanley and focused on building their Global Outsourcing Platform, eventually rising to Vice President. It was this early exposure to Wall Street business models that began Matt’s interest in building new business platforms, driving innovation, managing risk exposure and understanding the inherent element of failure in attaining success.

As Matt joined Best Buy he had the fortunate opportunity to work on numerous innovative initiatives launching new store concepts and new retail models. As a Director of Innovation Development one of his tasks was to shut down a new store concept that Matt had been responsible for. During this process it had become evident that the company had lacked a process to capture the insights and lessons from the numerous innovation projects that had failed previously. Based on his education and business experience he understood that failure was an undeniable part of the innovation process and that there was a valuable commodity inherent in that failure – wisdom.

While failure has recently become a favorite buzzword in the popular press and business journals it is still a tainted word in most American businesses that are driven by continued career growth, quarterly profitability and shareholder returns. Executives rarely get promoted based on their long list of failures and employees who risk becoming intrapreneurs are often discouraged from telling their stories and frequently end up leaving the organization where that wisdom becomes lost forever. This missed opportunity to learn from our failures became the spark Matt needed to fuel his drive to move innovation forward. While at Best Buy, he created the Failure Forums to capture the wisdom and lessons learned from the long list of innovation initiatives with the goal that sharing those lessons across the organization can help drive further innovation and avoid costly mistakes in the future. Now, Matt Hunt is ready to share this wisdom and innovation strategies with your organization to fuel innovation and catalog failure as a learning tool to drive organizational enhancement.

Matt Hunt’s management experience at Best Buy further enhanced his knowledge in organizational success and innovation in roles such as the Consumer Technology Manager, Solutions Development Manager, New Concepts Development Director, New Format Integration Team Director and Solutions Strategies Director.

Matt Hunt serves on the Board of Directors for several organizations including the Bakken Museum and the Minnesota Institute for Talented Youth. He had previously served on the Board of Directors for the Tesseract School of Eagan. His community service includes volunteering as the Corporate Lead for Best Buy’s Women’s Leadership Forum (New England) and with several chapters of Habitat for Humanity.

Experience as a Public Policy Fellow at the distinguished Humphrey School of Public Policy, University of Minnesota, further enriched and inspired Matt Hunt’s experience in innovation leadership and advancing public policy issues for the common good.

Matt Hunt is a results driven leader that has a track record of building new business platforms. He relishes in defining what the future will look like, building a ground-up strategy to meet that future, and through the ambiguity involved in innovation he enjoys moving a team and an organization toward that vision. While failure is inherent in the innovation process, with careful analysis and planning it can lead to organizational improvement and ultimately success. Let Matt Hunt assist you and your organization in driving a culture of innovation, building a learning organization, and cultivating failure into success.

——————-

Signup for Matt's Periodic Updates

Receive periodic email updates from Matt Hunt including his published pieces, updates on his progress, and more!