The Spark
News, insights and commentary from NS
Katherine Hill Ritchie Featured in Middle Market Growth
Sue Ter Maat | Middle Market Growth How GP, LP and Family Office Work Together Most Effectively Building relationships is the...
TecTraum Announces Completion of Clinical Trial
TecTraum Announces Completion of Multisite Clinical Trial Using pro2cool® Device for the Treatment of Concussions CLEVELAND —...
Profile: Nottingham Spirk — creativity is where family offices have the edge over private equity
Michael Foster | Family Capital Katherine Hill Ritchie, strategic director at Nottingham Spirk Family Office respects private...
Katherine Hill Ritchie Featured in CFO Dive
Making family offices your go-to source of capital Ted Kunston | CFO Dive An estimated $6 trillion to $7 trillion is availabl...
Amanda Beacher Featured in Clinical Trials Arena
Nottingham Spirk’s Director of Insights Amanda Beacher was quoted by Clinical Trials Arena regarding the FDA’s new guidance o...
Katherine Hill Ritchie Featured in Smart Business Dealmakers
Adam Burroughs | Smart Business Dealmakers Stay Ready: The Benefit of a Perpetual Data Room When Andy Panos, COO of Cloudbrea...
Nottingham Spirk: 2021 In Review
As year number 49 comes to a close, the team at Nottingham Spirk has so much to celebrate and be thankful for. Recognitions, ...
John Nottingham at Innovation Intersection
Nottingham Spirk “People say innovation is risky, but the riskiest thing is not to innovate.” Nottingham Spirk Co-CEO John No...
NS Named to Fast Company’s “The 100 Best Workplaces for Innovators”
Nottingham Spirk joins notable companies like Alibaba, Dell, Etsy, Google and Nestle Nottingham Spirk Fast Company announced ...
NS Leverages Partnerships to Produce Face Shields for Hospitals
Collaboration will produce up to 5,000 face shields per day through injection molding that can be mass produced for a fractio...
The 95% Commercialization Solution
Nottingham Spirk This commercialization article was originally published by the National Academy of Inventors in Technology &...
TEDxAsburyPark Preview with John Nottingham on “Getting to Wow”
Nottingham Spirk John Nottingham will take the Paramount Theater stage in Asbury Park, New Jersey on May 18 for the 7th editi...
Nottingham Spirk Out and About
Nottingham Spirk At Nottingham Spirk, we believe in engagement — in industries, in academia and in our community. Here are a ...
Get Out for a New Perspective
Bill Nottingham Managing Partner & VP, Growth Clients and prospective clients ask us all the time about trends in various...
Musings: Where Do Ideas Come From?
Nottingham Spirk We’re asked all the time, “How do you come up with new ideas?” The truth is, there’s no one answer. We’ve as...
Close the Innovation Gap: Strategic Alignment vs. “Random Acts of Innovation”
Survey reveals that many companies grasp concepts but still struggle with implementation Nottingham Spirk We appreciate repor...
Bloomberg Advantage: IoT Benefits Every Market
Bill Nottingham, VP of Growth, recently spoke to the hosts of the Bloomberg Advantage podcast. Here are some highlights. On t...
Innovation Navigation: An Interview with John and Bill Nottingham
John and Bill Nottingham were guests on Innovation Navigation, a SiriusXM satellite radio show from the Wharton School of Bus...
2016 Edison Awards: Three Client Collaborations Nominated
Three products designed by Nottingham Spirk are in the running for 2016 Edison Awards, which recognizes innovation. Two of th...
Millennials Are Changing Corporate Structure — for the Better
Millennials are prompting more companies to reconsider the traditional corporate hierarchy, according to Entrepreneur.com: “W...
A Mammoth Undertaking
Massive sculptures of a mastodon and a mammoth that once graced the walls of the Cleveland Zoo’s old pachyderm building will ...
Designing a $93M Medical Technology: A Behind the Scenes Look
Excerpt from the Qmed Article: While working a Case Western Reserve University, Yoram Rudy, PhD had the idea for a game-chang...
Freedom and Responsibility Culture
As soon as Netflix announced its unlimited parental leave policy for new parents, doubters were quick to predict that the pol...
Troy-Bilt FLEX: Modular Outdoor Power Equipment
MTD Products, owner of several lines of outdoor power equipment (OPE) products, approached Nottingham Spirk with an unprecede...
Learning To Innovate By “Making”
We were impressed with Westlake, Ohio teacher K. Scott Kutz’s recent op-ed in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, “In Defense of Shop...
The “Open Office” Trend is Not a One-Size-Fits-All Solution for Innovation
Reorganizing your office into one massive conference room could do more harm than good. In the 1990s, “cubicles” became symbo...
Maintaining The Culture of Creativity
“Organizational Charts” by Manu Cornet Cartoonist Manu Cornet created a series of “organizational charts” for some of the big...
Cub Cadet HAULER: Innovative Versatility
MTD (Headquartered in Valley City, OH), owner of Cub Cadet lawn and garden tractors, is partnering with NS to develop new pro...
CWRU & Nottingham Spirk Partnership for Innovation
Case Western Reserve University is already one of the top 20 schools in the nation for research funding. But the expanding th...
Shattered Glass: The Value of a “Soft Launch”
In May 2013, Bloomberg News declared that Google was “winning the innovation war against Apple.” Google is winning this war b...
Engineer Opportunities: Elsie’s New Car
Innovation changes the world — and changing the world of just one person still counts. We were reminded of this by the above ...
2015 CES: Emerging Innovation
As usual, the gravitational pull of the tech giants at the recent Consumer Electronics Show was nearly inescapable, but we we...
Commentary: “Goodbye, TiVo?” via Verge.com
This is a commentary piece based on an article found on theverge.com and written by Chris Ziegler. Chris is a longtime TiVo f...
HALO Bassinest: Innovative Solution for Co-Sleeping with Infant
HALO, the inventor of the SleepSack wearable blanket for infants, was founded by a couple who lost a child to Sudden Infant D...
Forbes Reinventing America: Invest In The Midwest
INDIANAPOLIS (November 13, 2014) — Ohio was well represented at the Forbes Reinventing America Summit. Featured speakers incl...
Seeing the Possibilities
Kris Pickel | NBC WKYC TV Cleveland KRIS PICKEL: Welcome back everyone. There is a lot to be excited about here in Northeast ...
BioInnovation Partnership
CLEVELAND (April 21, 2014) – Leaders of the Austen BioInnovation Institute in Akron (ABIA) and Nottingham Spirk, a national i...
Relentless Innovation in 2014: Commentary
Relentless Innovation is Simultaneously Continuous and Disruptive In this month’s issue of Inc., Steve Blank spoke to the gra...
Empowering Innovators Intel Film Series
Intel teamed up with Vimeo to develop a film series called Empowering Innovators. The series explores the ways in which Intel...
Master Of Invention John Spirk On Why Small Businesses Need Less U.S. Regulation
Vanna Le | Forbes On March 26–28, Forbes will host its first Reinventing America Summit in Chicago, Illinois, a congress of m...
Create a Culture of Innovation
Nottingham Spirk At the core of Nottingham Spirk's business is a culture rooted in innovation. After 42 years in business, co...
A New Year’s Greeting from Nottingham Spirk
John Nottingham & John Spirk Co-CEOs & Co-Founders Capitalizing on Core Strengths As we approach the New Year, we are...
Rug Doctor® Launches Portable Spot Cleaner
Rug Doctor® recently introduced the Portable Spot Cleaner, the next generation in floor care. Nottingham Spirk partnered with...
Key to Success: Innovation
Key to Success: Two of Nottingham Spirk’s latest innovative products have been featured in Crain’s Cleveland Business. Nottin...
LED Bulbs Pay Off in the Long Run
Dan Friedell | USA Today If the next light bulb you buy is an LED, it may be your last. The technology behind light-emitting ...
Exploradio Visits Nottingham Spirk
A Cleveland company housed in a historic church is refining the art of product design. Over the past four decades Nottingham ...
RainX Perfect Dose Car Wash Now Available
Are you tired of the large jug of car wash solution sitting on your garage self? The at-home car wash process is now simple a...
In the Idea Kitchen, Too Many Cooks Can Spoil the Broth
Adam Bryant | The New York Times This interview with John Nottingham and John Spirk, co-presidents of Nottingham Spirk, an in...
PackH2O Receives Popular Science Award
A water backpack, PackH2O, designed in collaboration with Greif, Inc., has been honored with a 2012 Best of What’s New Award ...
Business Hall of Fame Inductions
The Northeast Ohio Business Hall of Fame recognizes John Nottingham and John Spirk’s innovative work over the last 40 years. ...
ViewRay MRI System Gets FDA Approval
The ViewRay MRI System, a client of Nottingham Spirk, has received clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Draw...
Cleveland Arts Prize
The oldest award of its kind in the United States, the Cleveland Arts Prize is a testament to the standard of excellence and ...
Open Innovation Summit
At the recent Open Innovation Summit in Washington DC, featured speaker, John Nottingham shared best approaches for how compa...
If Sustainability is the New Religion, Maybe it Belongs in Church
Design partners John Nottingham and John Spirk thought so. Saving a beautiful old church and rehabbing it as a den of creativ...