Suna Polat, Ph.D., Director, Collaborative Innovation & Social Product Development Consulting Practice
Dr. Suna Polat has over 23 years of experience in technology development, product development, innovation management, implementation of strategic innovation capabilities—including modeling and simulation (M&S), open innovation, knowledge management, and social technologies—and driving change and adoption, through her career at Procter & Gamble (P&G) and with her own consulting practice thereafter.
Prior to joining CIMdata, Dr. Polat developed expertise in transport phenomena (and CAE modeling) in academia, and spent over 21 years at P&G, where initially she developed process and material technologies for diverse product categories. Subsequently, Dr. Polat held various leadership roles; she was responsible for the implementation of strategic innovation capabilities, such as open innovation, M&S, and social innovation platforms, for which a common thread was driving organizational culture change and adoption. During her tenure at P&G, Dr. Polat worked with and benchmarked best-in-class companies in diverse industries including consumer goods, material suppliers, IT technology, auto, airline, and pharmaceuticals, to source technology and identify both best practices and new approaches for cultivating innovation and innovation productivity. Dr. Polat’s current interests include methods to assess the state of connectivity and collaboration in large organizations and networks; the effect of organizational culture on innovation output; and the influence of communities and social technologies on employee experiences, creativity, and innovation output.
Dr. Polat holds a BS (Middle East Technical University, Turkey), an MS (University of Pittsburgh), and a Ph.D. (McGill University, Canada) in Chemical Engineering.
