John Feland

Dr. Feland started his career as a Mechanical Engineer and Product Designer at IDEO after his undergraduate studies at MIT and a masters in Stanford’s Design program. John, so far, is the only person to leave IDEO to join the military, leaving Silicon Valley during the dot.com boom to keep the nation safe serving in the Air Force. With assignments in both intelligence and teaching, John honed both his skills at ferreting out insights where everyone else saw noise and in communicating these insights in easy consumed and actionable ways. Returning to Silicon Valley in 2001, he brought both practices together in his PhD research at Stanford University and was invited to help teach the first class the famed d.school ever offered.

Dr. Feland led the Concept Prototyping team at Synaptics to craft the world first working multi-touch controlled smartphone prototype, months ahead of the iPhone launch, winning at Red Dot Design Concept award for the effort. After chasing handset manufacturers in a Product Marketing role and frustrated with the rebuffs that “carriers won’t let us innovate” and “Apple is not a threat to the business,” John joined SK Telecom Americas to better understand the carrier mindset. Those questions answered, he simultaneously turned around the Global Design Innovation Program at Stanford’s Design Group (now the SUGAR network) and incubated Argus Insights, proving out the theories from his research would have prevented the demise of Nokia and others disrupted by Apple.

Constantly on the edge of novel markets, whether the waves of disruption allow for the best rides, Dr. Feland now focus on the Internet of Things, cutting through the chaos to find those nuggets of insights that move the market forward from whispered promises to a full ecosystem of realized capabilities. He and his team continue to evolve the tools behind Argus Insights to ensure clients have the evidence and recommendations necessary to rise above the competition and grab their unfair share of the tremendous opportunity that IoT is evolving into.