Paul Earle Jr.
Paul Earle is an entrepreneur, writer, and educator with significant experience in branding, innovation, new product development, new venture formation, and IP licensing.
At Kellogg, Paul’s most recent endeavors focus on ways design and creativity can establish a sustainable competitive advantage. Of note is his role in cocreating “By Design,” a unique new experience bringing together students and top creative leaders.
As a practitioner, Paul founded and heads A Day In The Sun,® an Evanston, Illinois-based futures lab that both advises clients on brand innovation, and cofounds its own brand ventures.
Paul’s perspectives in teaching entrepreneurship and creativity stem from extensive experience in the arena. He is a cofounder of, and remains a significant contributor to, new-to-the-world brands such as GOODLES®, a breakthrough in macaroni and cheese that as of late 2024 is one of the fastest-growing new brands in all of North America retail; Big Nose Kate®, a trailblazing western whiskey; and Small Wonder®, a new line of powder concentrate haircare products providing salon-grade performance without all the waste. Paul’s partners on these enterprises include a number of extraordinary entrepreneurs and product makers, a number of sophisticated early-stage venture capital funds, and a number of famous Hollywood actors who serve as brand ambassadors.
Prior to opening A Day In The Sun® in 2017 via its predecessor E&Co., Paul was cofounder and Executive Director of Farmhouse, the innovation center at the renowned global creative agency Leo Burnett. Amongst a number of achievements at Farmhouse was the creation—from scratch—of the High Noon® vodka brand in conjunction with a top global wine and spirits company. High Noon® has grown from those first rough sketches at Farmhouse to one of the largest spirits brands in the United States, generating over $1Billion per year in sales.
Earlier tours of duty include roles at River West Brands, a brand intellectual property acquisition and redevelopment company he founded that eventually became part of Omnicom Group (NYSE: OMC); Kraft Foods, where Paul learned the trade of brand management and sales; and Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising, where Paul first witnessed the potency of a great creative idea.
Paul’s written works have appeared in publications such as Forbes, Fortune, Innovation Leader, and the compendium Kellogg on Branding. He has hosted numerous podcast episodes and recently cocreated and hosted a Webinar series called Design Heroes™.
Paul earned an MBA from Kellogg and a BA from Hamilton College. He proudly sits on the Board of Trustees at Hadley, the prominent learning platform for the blind and visually impaired. Paul lives in the Chicago area with his wife, two boys, and cavapoo.
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MBA, 1999, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
BA, 1993, Hamilton College -
Account Management, Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising, 1993-1997
President, River West Brands, 2001-2011
Brand Management, Kraft Foods, 1998-2000
Executive Director, Farmhouse, Leo Burnett, 2012-present
Corporate Innovation and New Ventures (ENTR-903-0)
The terms "entrepreneurship" and "innovation" often evoke images of a startup in a garage. But what about the game-changing innovation generated by large, established corporations? Now more than ever, large organizations are focusing on innovation as the key to their growth and prosperity. In some instances, it is critical for their very survival. These companies are investing in systems and processes to accelerate the pace of innovation, but need their people to step up in order to win in a competitive marketplace.
This course addresses the emerging practice of "corporate entrepreneurship," also called "intrapreneurship," broadly defined as the application of entrepreneurial capabilities to the development of new ventures within an existing firm. In 2014 the course was redesigned with enhanced student-experience goals, that would 1) create a more experiential-learning ecosystem, taking students out of the classroom into the realities of the boardroom, 2) curate a unique curriculum through impactful sessions and connections with top executives from multi-national corporations, and 3) consider the entrepreneurial movement as an opportunity and tool to drive innovation and growth in and around large enterprises.
With a unique focus on exploring and learning from real companies with real problems, classes provide highly immersive learning opportunities, putting students right in the middle of the innovation arms race. By working directly with companies, students are able to roll up their sleeves and sample traditional and entrepreneurial innovation techniques from the perspective of impacting corporate strategy, market-facing initiatives, corporate venturing, startup partnering and new product development.
Student teams work with a Sponsoring Partner for the quarter, and are tasked with the creation of innovative ideas around their growth challenge areas, which are presented to the class by the company's executives. Teams are further tasked with targeting, developing, evaluating, vetting and refining their top idea through a concept development process, culminating in a final project deliverable and formal presentation to company's leadership team. Previous KIEI-903 Sponsoring Partners have included McDonald's Corporation, United Healthcare and Procter & Gamble.
In addition to the primary team project, students are also exposed to corporate and entrepreneurial innovation processes at a range of multi-national headquarter and corporate innovation center locations, startups, incubators and accelerators. Many classes are held on site, at KIEI-903 Organization Partner locations, where students interact with management, through thematic discussions, debates and workshops, about the current market opportunities and growth challenges they are pursuing. Organization Partners, where classes have been previously held include United Airlines, Whirlpool, PepsiCo, Accenture, Leo Burnett, Target, AKTA, TechNexus and1871.
All readings will be included in the course pack. Current details and updates about the class experience can be reviewed here.
Field Study (ENTR-498-0)
Field Studies include those opportunities outside of the regular curriculum in which a student is working with an outside company or non-profit organization to address a real-world business challenge for course credit under the oversight of a faculty member.
New Venture Discovery (ENTR-462-0)
New Venture Discovery is designed to help students navigate the earliest stages of starting a new venture beginning with the identification of a problem in the market that is worth solving. The class teaches students tools and techniques to translate these problems into viable business concepts, with an emphasis on enabling an aspiring entrepreneur to get as far as possible, with as little as possible, as FAST as possible.
Student teams begin the quarter with nothing more than a series of hypotheses about a new venture, then design and execute a series of in-market experiments that either validate these assumptions, or force them to iterate aspects of their business model in real time. The objective of the course to guide students toward the achievement of "product-market fit" as a crucial first step in in the creation of a startup. From here, students can evolve their businesses by enrolling in the "Develop" and "Launch" courses that serve as the continuation of the new ventures curriculum.
New Venture Discovery course material ranges from customer discovery and design thinking, to rapid prototyping (of both offers and business models), bootstrapping methods and communicating/selling the vision for a new venture. The course format is a blend of lecture, fieldwork, cross-team collaboration and ideation sessions, outside speakers and expert mentoring.
**This course may not be dropped after the second week of the quarter**
