Dan Brown

General Info

About

Dan Brown, president of LoggerHead Tools, is an award-winning designer, inventor and entrepreneur. He is also a professor at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering and a champion of establishing design-inspired leadership.

Brown has worked with companies to create and commercialize differentiated new products and processes for their businesses, often creatively redefining these markets. He has received over 100 U.S. and international utility patents for his new product solutions.

Brown founded LoggerHead Tools with a mission to develop innovative, new-to-the-world hand tools manufactured in America. He launched the Bionic Wrench in 2005, and it was met with enthusiasm, winning over 10 international design and innovation awards. As the Bionic Wrench approaches 2.5 million units sold, he has had to fight knockoffs in the marketplace.

Brown has worked in the chemical and plastics industry where he applied his work experience, science education, and ability in engineering and leadership. While serving in management roles, Brown quickly discovered the necessity of creating protectable competitive advantages to sustain a business model. These early marketplace experiences and highly competitive interactions inspired Brown to design several new technologies for his employers. This led to the application for his first three patents for these inventions before the age of 30.

In 1991, Brown launched his own product design consultancy, Consul-Tech Concepts. He developed an approach called “Differentiation by Design®,” a process that strategically focused on potential “white spaces,” or unseen needs and requirements, early in the design stage.

One of Brown's life aspirations has been to share his experiences through teaching and empowering future design leaders. Brown’s experience and education in design, technology, intellectual property and business provide him numerous narratives to share with his students at Northwestern University.

A native of the south side of Chicago, Brown earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from St. Xavier University in 1978. He earned a master’s degree in product development from Northwestern University in 2005. Brown also holds a Ph.D. in design from Coventry University in the U.K.

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