Joe Sinfield

Joe Sinfield is an Innosight Fellow and tenured Associate Professor of Civil Engineering at Purdue University, bringing a deep understanding of both business innovation and technology to clients. Previously serving as a partner at Innosight, Joe played an integral role in the development of Innosight’s disruptive opportunity assessment tools, jobs-to-be-done research methodology, and overall approach to develop and commercialize concepts in new markets. He has worked with Innosight clients in a broad range of business sectors including chemicals, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, consumer packaged goods, and an array of industrial markets. At Purdue, his work focuses on the development and application of advanced sensing technologies as well as entrepreneurship and engineering business management.

Sinfield is a sought-after speaker on the management principles that can be employed to more predictably drive innovation and serves on the innovation advisory boards of multiple companies. He is the co-author of The Innovator’s Guide to Growth: Putting Disruptive Innovation to Work (Harvard Business Press, 2008), and has published in business periodicals such as Sloan Management Review, Marketing Management, IndustryWeek, BusinessWeek online, Forbes.com, and Financial Executive, as well as in an array of peer-reviewed scientific journals including Applied Spectroscopy, Water Resources Research, Transportation Research Record, and the Journals of Environmental Engineering, Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, Construction Engineering and Management, Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, and Tunneling and Underground Space Technology.

Prior to Innosight and Purdue, he spent five years with McKinsey & Company. Joe has also worked as a geotechnical engineer for Haley & Aldrich and as a post-doctoral researcher on joint efforts between MIT’s Departments of Civil Engineering and Nuclear Engineering. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Civil Engineering, summa cum laude, from Bucknell University, and also holds Master’s and Doctoral Degrees in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.