Teresa Jurgens-Kowal
Teresa Jurgens-Kowal is passionate about innovation. She is a writer, speaker, coach, and trainer. Teresa founded Global NP Solutions in 2009 to help individuals and organizations learn, adopt, transform, and sustain innovation. She enjoys helping people reach their highest levels of success with innovation. Teresa’s consulting clients include a full spectrum of large industry corporations to entrepreneurs seeking to launch new products and to improve innovation system effectiveness. She frequently presents keynotes and breakouts locally and nationally on her favorite topics of innovation, design thinking, and product development.
Teresa is the co-editor of the PDMA Body of Knowledge (2020) and is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP®), Certified Professional Engineering Manager (CPEM), and New Product Development Professional (NPDP). In 2021, she released The Innovation ANSWER Book 2nd edition, a comprehensive guide to building innovation leadership. The companion The Innovation QUESTION Book was published in 2022 and will soon be available in Spanish. Teresa has also published chapters on innovation with the Virtual Team Model (2018), Leveraging Constraints for Innovation and on Quality Management Systems in the Engineering Management Handbook (2022), among other publications.
Prior to founding Global NP Solutions, Teresa worked in process development and as an internal innovation expert at ExxonMobil Chemical Company. She has degrees in Chemical Engineering from the University of Washington (PhD) and University of Idaho (BS), and an MBA from West Texas A&M University. Teresa lives in Southeast Texas and enjoys bicycling and scrapbooking in her leisure time.
GLOBAL NP SOLUTIONS
Building Innovation Leaders
ChEnected contributions
Lessons on Leading Change
What type of leader are you, and what are your strongest abilities? Learning to lead means understanding where your strengths as a leader lie so you can also learn to manage your weaknesses.
What Strategy Means to Engineers
Many chemical engineers are engaged in tactical implementation rather than strategic project development. However, understanding the firm’s strategy can help improve project selection, team organization, and profitability at a company.
How to Tackle a Small Project
Lou Russell’s new book, Managing Projects, is great for anyone new to the concepts and methodologies of project management.
Getting Ahead by Killing Your Company?
Lisa Bodell’s new book, Kill the Company, offers an entertaining and contrarian view to shake up the status quo and bring about change and innovation.
What Is the Goal?
When is the last time you read a novel that offered insights you could apply on the job as a process engineer? Check out the classic The Goal for a must-read drama that takes place inside a manufacturing plant.
How Do You Generate Great Ideas?
Idea Stormers by Bryan Mattimore is s a terrific reference for any manager or leader trying to find creative solutions for engineering or business problems.
Making Chemical Engineers Even Better Problem Solvers
The Invisible Element is an interesting book for chemical engineers interested in building better problem-solving teams.
Book Review: Great Webinars
Need to create a jaw-dropping presentation? Cynthia Clay’s Great Webinars can help chemical engineers create presentations that are more captivating and informative.
Book Review: Peer Power
Have you been challenged by difficult colleagues or by other workplace relationship conflicts? Then maybe Peer Power should be next on your reading list!
Book Review: Jumping the S-Curve
Outside the realm of most technical literature that chemical engineers might typically encounter, “Jumping the S-Curve” offers insights into how high-performing companies function. Individuals working in technology fields will find this book important to help identify top performing companies for employment.
Book Review: The Innovator's DNA
Clayton Christensen is perhaps most famous for identifying the concept of a disruptive innovation – a new technology that introduces new markets and new ways that people interact with products. His latest offering, The Innovator’s DNA, co-authored by Jeff Dyer and Hal Gregersen, takes a look at what skills lead a person to innovation and creativity.
Talking to Your Bo$$: Taxes and Conclusion
Tax decisions can affect chemical engineers as they take their projects from the lab to the field. Learn more about how you can learn to make wise tax-related decisions that will please your boss and bolster your project's success.
Talking to Your Bo$$: Inventory
Why does your bo$$ talk about things like inventory control when he asks you about operating costs? Inventory is the aggregate of items that are either held for sale in the ordinary course of business, in the process of production for sale, or currently consumed in the production of goods or services to be available for sale in the future.
Talking to Your Bo$$: Operating Costs
If you're a chemical engineer and want to discuss operating costs intelligently with your boss, you'll need to understand a number of financial concepts, including gross margin, cost of goods, depreciation, allocation, and capital investment.
Talking to Your Bo$$: Cash Flow Statements
In the last few posts, we’ve talked about various Financial Statements that companies are required by law to prepare and share with stockholders and government agencies. Your bo$$, of course, shows sensitivity to operating and production costs because he or she wants these Financial Statements to be favorable. In particular, in the last blog, we discussed Income Statements at length.
Do you think if a company shows a positive Net Income that they are free of all financial trouble?
A Cash Flow Statement, like the Income Statement, shows changes in money flow during a specific period of time: a month, quarter, or year, for example. (You’ll recall from an earlier post that the Balance Sheet is a snapshot in time, showing a “material balance” of Assets against Liabilities.) Cash Flow is easy to calculate.