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Alain Paul Martin
 Harvard-MIT Trained Leader • Meta-innovation Scientist
2012 Harvard Fellow, Advanced Leadership

  • Patent Recipient: USA, Canada and Japan
  • CEO, The Professional Development Institute® PDI Inc.
  • Chief Architect, Harvard University Global SystemTM
  • C-Suite Leaders' Coach & Trainer: Extensive experience in leadership, strategy, innovation, complex negotiations, advanced risk and project management, with references and videos
  • Educator, Graduate Courses: Advanced leadership, innovation leadership, advanced negotiation, risk management
  • Workshop & Webinar Leader: Technical leadership for scientists & engineering teams, principled negotiation, co-elevating leadership and the complete innovation cycle

Printable-professional vitae (PDF Format), including recognitions, awards, applied research and practical innovations

“Mr. Martin tirelessly invests his energy to leverage his successes and networks into solutions that have a direct, positive impact on the poor... Mr. Martin's management background and extensive experience in advising global leaders, alongside his motivation to eradicate poverty and its ill effects, qualify him to make a uniquely valuable contribution to addressing inequity on a societal level. With demonstrated skills in entrepreneurship, negotiation, and issue analysis, he is precisely the sort of thoughtful, versatile leader we need to advocate on behalf of the poor and underserved.”

Professor Paul E. Farmer, MD, PhD
Chair, Global Health & Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Chief and Co-Founder, Division of Global Health Equity, Brigham and Women's Hospital
Cofounder, Partners In Health (www.pih.org)

“Alain Paul Martin has a long and valued association with Teck Metals Ltd. We believe that Alain's teachings go far beyond the typical project management focus on scope, schedule, cost, and, sometimes, quality. Alain delves into topics that project managers working with complex issues or program managers dealing with multiple complex and often inter-related projects need to know about, and must become skilled at, to be successful. These teachings are supported by tools that we and our teams use on a regular basis to move ideas and concepts into well-defined projects that can be managed with conventional project-management tools.” (Praise for Alain Martin written in 2015 by my predecessor, John F. Higginson and I)

“For twelve years including the last six as Director of Applied Research & Technology at Teck Resources, Canada's largest diversified resource company, we have successfully used the fast-evolving Harvard University Global SystemTM in innovation, from idea generation to project management. With it, teams gain a strategic head start, by beginning earlier and going deeper, well beyond its counterparts, such as IDEO, Stage-Gate, TRIZ and other innovation methods and change-management processes (ADKAR), which can effectively feed into it.” (2019)

Dr. Rob Stephens, PhD (Nanotechnology), Entrepreneur
Former Director, Applied Research & Technology, Teck Resources
Past Chair & Director, The Extraction & Processing Division (EPD)
The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (www.tms.org)

“Alain [Martin] delivered, over a 4-year period, 'Advanced Project and Risk-Management' workshops to our nuclear project managers and executives at Ontario Power Generation... These sessions covered the complete project-management cycle from project and risk incubation to stakeholder analysis and strategy formulation to operational planning including estimating, resource allocation, budgeting, earned-value planning and progress control. Including myself, the sessions were taken by approximately 200 OPG Project Managers,Sr. Engineers and Executives. Feedback from all sessions were excellent. Course materials and instruction exceeded all of the requirements established by OPG.”

Mark Arnone
Vice-President, Nuclear Refurbishment, Ontario Power Generation

“[We] are a Canadian trade union with a progressive approach to labour relations. We are strong advocates of Alternate Dispute Resolution and Interest-Based Negotiation. [After] participating in a professional-development seminar applying Harvard University Global SystemTM's tools, our executive assistant recommended the services of Alain Martin.

For nearly two years, Mr. Martin has acted as a strategic advisor and a seminar leader, first working with our executive committee, and subsequently with our national board representing 28 branches across the country.

The focus of our professional work has been on exemplary leadership, strategy, governance, strategic alliances, interest-based negotiation, conflict resolution and risk mitigation. Although these topics were effectively addressed in the past, Alain Martin was the first to bring to light the intricate dynamics between them with the support of Harvard University Global System's extensive library of templates and roadmaps.

Armed with better skills and cutting-edge practical instruments such as the Negotiation Mandate, the Responsibility Chart and Harvard® Creativity Templates, we can, with less guesswork, better simulate and validate each negotiation party's scope and value chain, clarify our respective roles, define the conditions beyond each party's control and explore in-depth a wide range of risk and conflict-resolution scenarios.

We at APOC are fortunate to work with Alain Martin and delighted to recommend his exemplary leadership and negotiation-excellence seminars, as well as his coaching and consulting services.”

Guy Dubois, National President, The Association of Postal Officials of Canada (APOC)

Praise for Alain Paul Martin's Book Titled:
“Harnessing the Power of Intelligence, Counterintelligence & Surprise Events”

“This is an extraordinarily thoughtful and well written book on a topic of great contemporary importance. Its advice is detailed, practical and completely on target.”

Professor Warren McFarlan, Harvard Business School


“Alain Martin integrates strategic planning, competitive analysis, and risk management tools into a powerful framework that provides valuable theoretical and practical approaches to strategy formulation and business risk management. His trenchant advice to 'use competitive intelligence as both a sword and a shield' is particularly relevant in today's competitive marketplace. More importantly, Martin shows how the ethical and responsible use of competitive intelligence can prepare an organization for unprecedented changes in the external environment. This practical book is well worth the busy executives' time.”

Dr. Peter B. Corr, Senior Vice President, Science and Technology, Pfizer Inc

“I have used the framework described in this remarkable book successfully for several years, first, to orchestrate the turnaround of North America's fastest growing casualty-insurance company, and subsequently, to craft a vision and strategic direction of a $75 billion financial institution.”

John Harbour, Former President and CEO, Desjardins Casualty Insurance Group,
and President & COO, Desjardins Confederation

Note: In this video recorded in French in a Montreal restaurant, Mr. John Harbour outlines how he applied the evolving Harvard University Global SystemTM for over ten years. Mr. Harbour's team turned a $100-million Desjardins' subsidiary from a lagger to the leading general-insurance firm in Canada (now a multi-billion dollar firm). Promoted president of Desjardins $78-billion's conglomerate, he applied the System's principles, framework, tools and algorithms to chart the future of the financial institution, now a world leader in cooperative banking. Invited by the premier (governor) of Quebec, to lead the SAAQ, Mr. Harbour's team reversed the rampant casualty growth and saved thousands of lives. Within five years, his team reduced the death rate on highways by 35% and severe accidents by 43%, despite 15% growth in highway traffic.Consequently, the $489 million deficit turned into a $20-million surplus. (testimony in French).

“This book has a range of excellent concepts that are useful to DOD organizations to improve their awareness of internal and environmental factors. This increased awareness could help leaders anticipate emerging issues and concerns to DOD at large. Mid-level leaders should know that the book is really about how an organization can gather and manipulate information that is relevant to their organizations and not get caught in the trap of thinking the book is primarily about intelligence in a military sense. As we operate in increasingly complex environments, information gathering, synthesizing, filtering, and distributing are incredibly important organizational tasks. This book helps people think about and approach the complexity and uncertainty organizations face today.”

Col. Robert J. D'Amico, Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Department of Defense

“Alain Paul Martin has produced a book that allows decision-makers to improve their ability to understand how intelligence professionals link the dots between collection, analysis and interpretation.”

Ray R. Henault, General and Chief of the Defence Staff, Canadian Forces

“At present, one of the most important strategic management challenges is understanding and enhancing the process of transforming vast amounts of information into useable knowledge. Alain Martin's book is an excellent guide to meeting this challenge. He provides a structure and format that enhances our understanding and creates useable knowledge. I highly recommend that all managers and leaders read this book with a view to gaining informational insights and practical knowledge that can be applied to either everyday or crisis situations.”

George Kolisnek, Director Strategic Intelligence, Department of National Defence

“I sincerely hope incumbent members of the Defence Department will read this book, and that it be used in the instruction of all at military staff colleges, so that application of its guidance will assist all levels of national defence management in “harnessing” the powerful intelligence factors. Not only will the lessons be instructive for all, but also, the book will be an invaluable resource for its research references.”

Brigadier-General Lloyd Skaalen, NORAD's Regional Deputy Commander (retired)



Faculty Chair, Innovation Ecosystems: Alain Paul MARTIN

Alain Paul Martin, Workshop Leader
1. Current Positions

  • PDI's Chief Executive Officer: We are a catalyst in advancing co-elevating principled leadership and collaborative innovation is at the heart of our mission. Thanks to a diverse team of scientists, engineers, economists, assistants and clients, we distill the knowledge and best practices of innovation science, leadership, cognitive neuroscience, psychology, organization development and system thinking to spearhead innovations that maximize long-term user value, sustainability (SDG/ESG impacts), wise cash flow and bottom-line results. My expertise is in creating high-impact innovation-support instruments and leading innovation-leadership webinars for teams in fields ranging from pharmaceutical, biotechnology and public health to aerospace, robotics, ecommerce, banking & finance, STEM education, mining, defense and government.

  • Chief Architect, Harvard University Global System™ (for which PDI is Harvard University's licensee): I led the discovery, design and implementation of the system, as well as the software version, first used by Skanska (Finland, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Sweden and the UK) to manage $1M to multi-billion dollar projects. Now among our performance-improvement instrument ensembles, this System facilitates the creation and scaling of competitive, ecologically sustainable and socially beneficial user-centered products, services, policies and agile organizations. It also furthers the acquisition of critical skills in innovation and project management.

  • Faculty Chair: deliver courses and executive-development workshops on exemplary leadership and collaborative innovation (idea generation, cross-pollination, structured creativity, discovery & logistics, prototyping, strategy, negotiation, development, delivery) for scientists, engineers, policy makers, team leaders and graduate students, in English and French. I also lead two intensive leadership workshops for executive and administrative assistants (description and video: www.eharvard.org/EA.).

  • I taught graduate M.Sc. courses in strategy and management of change; and delivered hands-on leadership workshops at ASEA, Asia Productivity Organization (APO Asia), Bertelsmann, Boliden (Sweden), Cap-Gemini, EON, Framingham University, GE-Jet Engines (Canada, France, U.S.), Harvard University and the Ivy-League's Leadership Summit, Japan's Engineering Advancement Association (Japan ENAA), MD Robotics, Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, OCP Group, Ontario Power Generation (OPG Nuclear Power), Procter & Gamble, Teck Resources' Applied Research & Technology, Textron Bell Helicopter, United Nations' University (Tokyo), University of Québec and governments (Canada, EU, US).

2. Recognitions, Awards, Applied Research and Engineering & Social Innovations

  • Recognition and Awards: I am recognized by Harvard University's president for my “Leadership, Vision and Service” and PMI for “outstanding contribution to the state-of-the-art of project management”. I am a patent recipient (U.S., Canada and Japan), a production-innovation inventor at Peugeot, and the recipient of two aerospace awards from Bombardier-Canadair (now Airbus) for improving aircraft manufacturing. I have also created sustainable organizations (in business, government and NGOs), and practical tools for innovators, decision-makers and other professionals (details below and under Experience). Our Institute (PDI) is a recipient of a Canada's Award for Excellence's Certificate.

  • Harvard University Global System™
    Performance-improvement and sustainable-innovation's decision-support suite
    •  The Complete Framework: Vision, strategy, policy formulation and project management, and practical templates
    •  Harvard® Framework for Sustainable-Innovation and Start-Up Leadership: A Framework Applying Innovation Science, Cognitive Neuroscience, Psychology, Eco-Responsibility's Best Practices and Harvard University Global System™ Tools
    •  Groundbreaking-Innovation Ecosystem Universe: A work in progress to bring to light innovation complexity and opportunities or teams' considerations.
      • Harvard Innovation Funnel & Ecosystem Universe, Alain Paul Martin

    •  Continuous Risk Management: Proven roadmaps and templates applied across the tech and non-tech spectra
    •  Principled Negotiation: Framework and practical templates to define each party's mandate, role, strategy and tactics
    •  Harvard® Practical Time Management: The Complete Roadmap to validate and seek what matters most in our lives. The roadmap helps us plan and mobilize our scarcest non-renewable resource (time) for a life with a purpose, “a life worth living”.
    •  Harvard® Planners: These patented and affordable Planners help us turn our purpose into value; by proceeding from mobilizing to allocating time to goals, routine obligations and contingencies; and by breaking down goals into daily tasks.

      In space and timesaving, Harvard® Planners outperform the best from competition (Day-Timers®, Quo-Vadis® and The Economist®). Users can reschedule without rewriting details about tasks; and plan up to 10 events/hour without cluttering the next time line, in the pocket-sized version, and much more in larger Planners.

      Every buyer gets the best timesaver and contributes to a worthy cause; Harvard University receives a royalty which goes exclusively to fund student scholarships.

  • 10F-Template: Identifying, understanding and engaging pertinent stakeholders (including those invisible but ubiquitous) is a widespread challenge in complex-change management. Since perceptions are a reality in most people's minds, the first task is to capture the myriad of vested-interest perceptions, without omitting those blurred by the fogs of knowledge deficit, disinformation, and extreme surprise events (be they favorable or tragic). With the support of clients and peers, I created and fine-tuned, the 10F-Template, to assemble and probe stakeholders' positions in a systematic, inclusive yet concise way, readily accessible to professionals and support staff alike.

  • Multipurpose Mechanisms to Fast-Track and Maximize Creativity and Inclusion in Innovation Teams: On game-changing creativity, teamwork exemplarity and co-elevating leadership (mission-driven, on the high road, with resilience/grit, empathy, letting no one down), we are indebted to Arnold Barnett, Gilles Brassard, Emmanuelle Charpentier, François Delattre, Olivier De Weck, Jennifer Doudna, Dr. Paul Farmer (in health equity and social innovation), Profs. Olivier De Weck, Alfonso García Robles, John Harbour, Linda Hill, V. Narry Kim, Alva Myrdal, Lester B. Pearson, Shinya Yamanaka, Alva Myrdal, Louis Pasteur, Lester B. Pearson, Max Planck, Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Pardis Sabeti, John Sviokla, Sandrine Thuret, Shinya Yamanaka and Tu Youyou. We keep in mind Jean Moulin's selfless courage and visionary foresight that saved countless lives, during the transition from WWII to peace.

    We draw lessons from innovation teams led trailblazers such as from the universally-beneficial inventions of Joe Becker (Unicode), Louis Braille (Braille Code), Joseph Fourier, Benjamin Franklin and Dmitri Mendeleev, we invented a practical framework, templates, algorithms and simple equations and to maximize effectiveness, inclusion and delivery speed in teams, including support staff. In addition to creativity-improvement instruments, our complexity-reduction tools enable all team members to master the finest details in pilot-experiment and project planning (definition, estimating, scheduling, scarce-resource allocation, budgeting and earned value) and progress management. These mechanisms also fulfilled our goal to permit international teams to promptly share and probe plans and progress reports, across language boundaries.

    In countless firms across the tech and non-tech spectra, hard-working front-line leaders and administrative assistants are among the high-potential professionals often left behind in both innovation-skills and management development. Users' experience with these instruments demonstrates that investing in this cohort is fair, equitable, inclusive and economically viable to address talent scarcity and enhance full-team participation, informed collaboration, performance and competitiveness (user-testimonies video: www.eharvard.org/EA).

3. Current and Upcoming Publications

My book: “ Harnessing the Power of Intelligence, Counterintelligence & Surprise Events”, was recommended by leading scholars, executives and the intelligence community.

The monograph series titled “The Art & Science of Sustainable Innovation and Start-Up Leadership” are planned for publication in 2024. In the meantime, part of the content is shared with the participants in “Co-Elevating Innovation Leadership”, world seminars and webinars for leaders, innovation teams and entrepreneurs.

    Four Upcoming Monographs (Sept. 2025-Dec.2026): Content covered in 2024 workshops/webinars:
    Co-Elevating Innovation Leadership and the Complete Innovation Cycle


4. Experience: Strategic Advisor and Innovation & Management-of-Change Coach

In the mining and energy sectors, I advised, for 12 years, two directors of Applied Research & Technology at Teck Resources, Canada's largest resource corporation. At Ontario Power Generation, I led, for 4 years, advanced and intensive nuclear project- and risk-management workshops; training 200 nuclear-power scientists, engineers, executives and project leaders (see Mr. Mark Arnone's feedback at the beginning of this document).

In finance and banking, Desjardins' President John Harbour, whom I advised for 12 years, praised my role, as the main strategic advisor, in crafting “the vision and strategic direction of Desjardins”, a $75 billion financial institution, and “the world's 2nd strongest bank”, (Bloomberg's ranking at the time). I also coached the executive team to turn Desjardins' general-insurance subsidiary from a laggard into the industry's leader through strategic innovations, leapfrogging Zurich and ING; as “North-America's fastest-growing general insurer in 5 years”, quadrupling sales and raising profit tenfold (CEO's video in French at www.eharvard.org/2020/harbour.mp4). Desjardins and Skanska were the “proving grounds” for the incubation of Harvard University Global System™.

In the public service, I teamed-up, twice, with Mr. John Harbour at the Quebec financial-markets' regulator (AMF) and to reform the SAAQ, an agency saddled with a $489 million debt, fast-rising deaths and severe injuries, due to highway accidents. I researched the best practices (taught in leading actuarial schools) and governance, in precursor jurisdictions, from North America to France, Sweden, the U.K. and New Zealand. Then, I coached the SAAQ strategic team whose decisions saved thousands of lives, in less than 5 years; reducing the death toll (-35%) and severe bodily-injury accidents (-43%), despite a 15% highway-traffic growth; while turning the $489 million debt into $20 million surplus. Mr. Harbour described my 12-year contribution, to Desjardins and the SAAQ, in strategic thinking and innovation, in the above video (in French).

I advised two Canadian prime ministers on strategic policies. I also served as a non-partisan Executive Member of the Prime Minister's Committee on Government Reform. I advised the UNESCO's director general and authored “Overhauling the UNESCO and Strengthening Its Essence”.

I led assignments (public health, food security, bilateral trade, energy, mining, infrastructural-engineering projets in Africa, and evaluation of passenger-inspection systems and policies at major Canadian airports), where complex risks and sensitive multi-party negotiations (regional, national and foreign governments, NGOs, corporate, union and First Nations' representatives and professional associations) were of paramount importance. Insights into some of these assignments follow.

  • The creation, with Dr. Brian Morrissey, of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to improve food security, mitigate the undue influence of special-interest groups, restore public trust in the inspection system and position the country among the safest and trusted exporters;

  • Researching lessons from Mad Cow (BSE) and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob (vCJD) diseases in Britain. Nine months before BSE was diagnosed in Canada, Dr. Morrissey and I led a public-health retreat to prepare scientists and executives to prepare executives and scientists.

  • A proposal accepted by Canada's Prime Minister to deploy the best scientist to defuse the growing tensions with Asian trade partners, particularly Japan and China, following the discovery of Mad-Cow disease (BSE);

  • Advising the Northwest Territories' (NWT) government on large-scale environmental risks in energy and mining, from complex mine reclamations to potential oil and gas disasters in the Territories and the Arctic.

  • Coaching Arctic-circumpolar leaders (First Nations, NWT government, Sakha Republic of the Russian Federation), in principled negotiation skills and Harvard® tools, to explore options to resolve intra and inter-government issues;

  • Directing infrastructural engineering projects in Africa (660km-highway engineering funded by the World Bank; and 2800km microwave-communication engineering by CIDA). Gender equity was among the critical factors.

In public broadcasting, building on research of news delivery in democratic countries, I led the creation of CBC Radio Canada's (SRC) news-equity system; and provided user support in a Federal-election's test run. The goal was to excel in impartial delivery and timeliness of news and public-affairs programs, across six time zones; especially during elections, when accuracy and timely reporting are sine qua non conditions for transparency and effectiveness. The operations-research based system enhanced quality assurance, protected the broadcaster's against frivolous suits and strengthened the independence critical to CBC's mission.

In primary and secondary education, building on a pilot experiment with leaders and educators of Massachusetts' school boards and schools, I led workshops focused on system-thinking applications in the education of science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics (acronym STEAM), enhanced by an interdisciplinary decision-literacy module (“STEAM+D”). Learning to build trust and consensus; increasing the science capital (Pierre Bourdieu) and reducing complexity are among the new module's benefits. Thus, teachers can now gradually prepare K-12 learners to:

  • Validate goals, facts, perceptions and biases; make assumptions explicit; and opt for rational decisions by seeking evidence and logic, as close as possible to both users and the source(s) of expertise;

  • Learn to develop empathy for all stakeholders; hold the high moral ground; seek sustainable and just solutions; address the ever-changing risks and resistance to change inherent in complex issues; but also the poor and voiceless parties, including minorities and people with a disability;

  • Learn, before seeking approvals, to plan with rigor, equity, mindfulness, candor, humility and constructive arguments that resonate with − and inspire the trust of − decision-makers and other constituencies with vested interests in the issue(s), including not only those with the power to veto controversial decisions, but also the poor and voiceless parties, including minorities and people with a disability;

  • Acquire project-planning, organizational and execution skills with a pragmatic and proven framework and instruments superior to traditional project-management techniques.

5. Pro-bono Contribution

Active in civil society, I strive to advance innovation, inclusion, solidarity, exemplary leadership and decarburization practices in funding and governance decisions. I led CHEO children's hospital funding, food banks and teamed-up with the French Embassy and Washington's alumni clubs (Wharton, Chicago and Harvard) to support the Red Cross. Inspired by Drs. Paul Farmer and Jim Kim, I led a Harvard-alumni team that created PIH Canada to harness Canadian generosity for the public health and social justice of the poorest of poor. To enable tax-deductible donations, our unique value proposition , was to incorporate a charitable PIH Canada; leverage the headquarters' know-how and field expertise of PIH (Boston), while subjecting Canada-funded projects to independent Canadian auditing. Thus, we proved to the regulator (Canada's Revenue Agency) the differentiation-integration merits of PIH & PIH Canada teamwork: minimizing administrative costs and leveraging PIH-field expertise to maximize impact on beneficiaries.

I served for 10 years as a director of two Harvard University's alumni clubs. I was also elected, for 6 years, as president of Harvard Business School's club. I led educational events, which concurrently funded pro-bono initiatives to support public-health research, high-school students and communities in need in Africa, Canada and Haiti.

During the 2019-2021 COVID pandemics, I chaired three international-foresight panels titled: and “Incubating Antidotes to Exclusion, Disinformation and Inequality”, “ Preparing for the New Pandemics: Lessons from Science & Policy” and “ Sustainable Growth & Scaling through Innovation & Strategic Alliances”. I authored articles on strategic policies and mentored high-school teachers on Technical Leadership & Collaborative Innovation (see Preparing for Preparing for the Avalanche of Social Robots: Initial Thoughts on the Creation of a World Organization for Safe Collaborative Robots).

Memberships: Société de mathématique de France, Harvard (ALI) Advanced-Leadership Coalition (permanent). Past: Harvard Faculty Club, Canadian Operation Research Society (CORS), Association of Computing Machinery and the Sierra Club.

6. Education Summary

I am a 2012 Harvard Fellow, Advanced Leadership, a Harvard Business School's entrepreneurship alumnus (OPM 1997-99). I graduated in Commerce (Quantitative Methods) from Concordia University (Montréal) and studied advanced technology in Lille (France) with internships at Peugeot (manufacturing), ARD (National TV Network) in Berlin, the University of Ottawa (Particle Physics) and Carleton University's Faculty of Engineering (Hydrodynamics Lab).

I acquired skills in system design (4 years at Du Pont and Domtar), system thinking and management of change (MIT Sloan School), psychology (Gestalt Institute of Cleveland), and mediation and advanced negotiation for lawyers, at Harvard Law School, from which I am certified to teach negotiation in corporations. Learning about engineering, life sciences and social innovations is part of my lifetime mission. See page 5 of my CV for details on "Education, Professional Development and Continuous Learning".

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