Innovate Where It Matters - A TOC Perspective on Growth, Focus, and Competitive Advantage
Monday, March 30, 2026, at 09:00–13:30
Most organizations don’t suffer from a lack of ideas. They suffer from too many initiatives, a diluted focus, and innovation that appears active but fails to move the business forward.
Innovation consumes time, capital, and leadership attention. Yet growth remains incremental. Competitive advantage remains fragile. Risk quietly accumulates. The problem is rarely creativity. It is deciding where innovation truly matters.
This seminar challenges the way innovation is typically approached and introduces a focused, leadership-level alternative: innovation as a deliberate, constraint-driven growth decision — not a volume game. The idea is not to innovate more, but to innovate with precision and impact.
Using Theory of Constraints–based innovation thinking, you will explore how to:
- Concentrate innovation effort on the few leverage points that actually shift competitive position
- Avoid spreading resources across low-impact initiatives
- Design innovation that delivers customer value competitors cannot easily copy
- Turn innovation into growth — without increasing strategic risk.
You will gain a perspective on how innovation can be transformed from a fragmented activity into a systematic, high-impact approach that strengthens competitive position and supports sustainable growth.
Schedule
| 08:30 |
Registration and morning coffee at the Cone lobby (Käpyaula) |
|---|---|
| 09:00 |
Seminar Opening |
| 09:10 |
Session 1 Rami Goldratt, CEO, Goldratt Group |
| 11:15 | Networking break |
| 11:45 |
Session 2 Rami Goldratt, CEO, Goldratt Group |
| 13:15 |
Wrap-up and questions from the audience |
| 13:30 | End of the seminar |
Theory of Constraints
Theory of Constraints (TOC) helps challenge assumptions, focus on what truly matters, and improve flow to achieve breakthrough results. TOC is utilized in organizations, for example, to enhance production, supply chains, project management, and other operational processes. It helps to understand how bottlenecks affect the whole system and provides tools to overcome them.
For
The seminar is designed for leaders who want innovation to deliver decisive business results, not just activity or experimentation.
Speakers
Rami Goldratt
Rami Goldratt currently serves as CEO of Goldratt Group, a global consultancy with the largest roster of Theory of Constraints (TOC) consultants in the world.
Goldratt Group helps companies across verticals leverage operations excellence and business innovation to achieve healthy growth through the application of TOC methods.
Over the years, Rami Goldratt has been involved in consulting engagements with manufacturing, retail, automotive, textile, engineering, and service industries around the world.
Goldratt is considered one of the most influential leaders of the TOC body of knowledge, specifically in Sales and Marketing, where his work has become standard practice. He is also a co-author of Mastering Flow, a practical guidebook to implement Goldratt’s methodologies to boost performance in multi-project operations.
Lauri Saarinen
Lauri Saarinen is an Assistant Professor of Operations Management at Aalto University.
Lauri Saarinen is an expert in data analytics-based operations management, process improvement and planning of operations. He focuses in research and teaching on creating value with analytics using companies’ operational data and has specialized on questions related to value of local production, international supply chains and process improvement. Saarinen engages actively with industry with a goal to understand the edge of developing operations management and process improvement in practice.
He has carried out research work with companies from Finland, Switzerland and United States ranging from heavy industries to consumer electronics and healthcare. Saarinen develops new applied analytics teaching at Aalto and his teaching portfolio includes advanced operations management, operations strategy and statistical and quantitative methods for managers. Prior to arriving to Aalto, Saarinen gained experience at University of Lausanne taking part in M.Sc. and EMBA teaching. The students of Industrial Engineering at Aalto University chose Lauri as the Teacher of the Year in 2021 and Lauri was awarded the Teaching excellence award for the year of 2021 by the faculty of the Industrial Engineering Department.
Before joining the academia, Lauri worked in supply chain management, inventory and production planning optimization. He continues to work with industry engagements focusing on process analysis and improvement, analytics in operations and planning solutions.