Mary Drotar

Mary is co-founder of Strategy 2 Market, a product development consulting firm specializing in product development processes for large and mid-sized firms. She co-authored Learn & Adapt: ExPD an Adaptive Product Development Process for Rapid Innovation and Risk Reduction with her business partner, Kathy Morrissey. The book is based on an adaptive process for developing products called, Exploratory Product Development (ExPD).

Mary’s new product development expertise includes process, strategy, lean techniques, assumptions-based planning, and team development. Mary works with companies to improve their new product development process by integrating flexible and adaptable methods.

Mary began her career at Ford Motor Company and joined AT&T Bell Laboratories. She transitioned to consulting and then co-founded the firm Strategy 2 Market.

Mary was a Faculty Coach for The University of Chicago, Booth School of Business in the New Product Development Lab courses. She is a member of the Society of Women Engineers, and he has an MBA from The University of Chicago. She graduated from the Lean LaunchPad Educators Seminar through the National Collegiate Inventors & Innovators Alliance (NCIIA) at the University of California, Berkeley.

Mary and Kathy developed the Product Risk Framework, a tool for helping product teams identify and resolve product development risks and uncertainties. They received a grant for the Product Risk Framework in 2018 from the NSF STEM I-Corp program sponsored by the University of Chicago.