Laundry Time examined how effective an "intelligent" laundry solution was at simplifying and saving time on laundry tasks while also uncovering consumer attitudes about remote access and control of laundry appliances.

A rather unique concept dating back to 2004, we worked on the idea of using the fridge front real estate in a more rich fashion than with magnets. This concept was first launched on the idea of a universal charging station, which I described in late 2003.

John Knight took this idea and made it fly. Now it is available in stores as "Centralpark", precisely at the usual time of 5 years after inception:

My role in this? Making sure the right people work on it, provide and protect the funding, and make sure the right people hear about this in the right way to make the right "clicks" happen.

Unfortunately, this idea also fell to the great recession of 2008/09, out of many reasons. Nancy Snyder even dedicated the first chapter of her book "Unleashing Innovation", which was published in 2008, on how Centralpark went to market. Funny that the people mentioned are all still working for Whirlpool, while those that left fell by the wayside. Does not change the fact that I had the idea, wrote the first idea description (IDS) and kept it alife against severe pressure until my departure and beyond.

As part of my project portfolio with Connected Home and ACT, we developed a rather well-received prototype called the "Microwave TV". Laugh all you want at the concept, there are so many amazing uses to this platform that I am sure we will see more in this direction.

One of the really interesting ideas I had as Director, Connected Home, was the implementation of a low-cost online diagnostic solution. We called the program DOMINO and started it in 2004.

MEALTIME is a publicly acclaimed pilot of the Internet Home Alliance, now a part of CABA. It has generated more than $14M in PR value. It has been the highest impact PR event for Whirlpool Corporation for 8 consecutive quarters in 2003 and 2004. Here is a list of hits from Google that allow you to understand further how big the impact was. A crisp fact sheet is available online.

In the final year of IHS, I was asked to "resue" the business unit by accelerating earnings through a different channel. So far, we had focused on the "builder channel", selling into masterplanned communities like Playa Vista. Good money, but also slow. I was asked to get an appropriate product portfolio into retail.

Between 2000 and 2001, I was head of Integrated HomeSolutions Broadband Services. This was the first department with both operational and strategic components that I had ever created.