Industry Spotlight

Agri-innovation expert

Bernard has worked with farmers and agri-tech companies to explore practical innovation opportunities — from funding ideas to product development. He was head of AgInnovation at the University of Galway for over 6 years where he helped students create new business and improve farming operations.

Book A Discovery Call

The innovation village

Because people often see innovation as scary and hard, Bernard is always looking for ways to help individuals imagine innovation as something that they can actually do. One way that he helps reduce the risk and anxiety associated with creativity is the idea of an Innovation Village.

DISCUSS HOW THIS TOPIC COULD HELP YOUR ORGANISATION

The phrase “it takes a village to raise an innovation” challenges the myth of the lone genius. Behind every breakthrough are collaborators—partners, advisors, investors, customers—each contributing insight and resources. Innovation succeeds when diverse people bring their expertise and perspectives together.
This approach also extends beyond experts. True innovation requires listening to the people who will use your product or service. By engaging customers, clients, and communities early, organisations can uncover hidden needs and build solutions that are not only functional but meaningful and valued.
Bernard draws on history to make this point real. For example, even Thomas Edison’s legendary successes came not in isolation but with teams of assistants, financiers, and customers shaping the outcomes. For today’s organisations, the lesson is clear: innovation is strongest when it is shared.
Through workshops and mentoring, Bernard helps organisations build their own innovation villages—creating the networks, conversations, and collaborations that turn ideas into impact.

“It takes a village to raise an innovation.”

Edison with test tube (alone)
The myth: innovation as a lone genius moment.

Edison with his lab team. The reality:
breakthroughs happen with a team — innovation takes a village.

Bernard with two young farmers in the field: Out in the "village": discovering ideas by listening, learning, and collaborating.

Some of the businesses we’ve worked with

NIKOLA TESLA EXPERT

In cultivating innovation with clients and students, Bernard uses Tesla’s life to provide examples of how to balance bold dreams with hard thinking. He has found that Tesla stories help people to understand the practical dimensions of launching a new product or business while encouraging them to draw on their feelings, hopes, and wishes.

Bernard’s book, Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age, has sold over 250,000 copies and has been translated into 11 languages.

READ A REVIEW OF THE BOOK

ORDER A COPY

Who was Nikola Tesla?

Nikola Tesla [1856-1943] was a major contributor to the electrical revolution that transformed daily life at the turn of the twentieth century. His inventions and theoretical work formed the basis of modern AC electricity, and contributed to the development of radio and television. An astute self-promoter and gifted showman, Tesla cultivated a public image of the eccentric genius.

Seeming to combine magic with cutting-edge technology, Tesla continues to fascinate people yet Tesla offers valuable insight into the innovation process. In 1903, when he was struggling to use radio waves to send power around the world, Tesla wrote his backer, J.P. Morgan, that “my enemies have been successful in representing me as a poet and visionary.”

In doing so, Tesla’s critics were accusing him of not solving the business and technical problems related to his inventions, and perhaps they were right since it was Tesla’s rival Marconi who succeeded in developing radio. But we should not let their complaints keep us from seeing what Tesla teaches us about innovation.

Radically new ideas come from within a person, from a willingness to discern ideals and to connect them to the needs and wishes of society. Tesla teaches us, that like poets, innovators need to dream boldly but think hard. Only by doing both will we be able to create innovations, as Tesla did, to create a little bit of heaven here on earth.

WATCH A VIDEO OF BERNARD LECTURING ON TESLA

Bernard Carlson has vast experience in all things relating to Innovation, from writing books, holding workshops, and giving lectures. He has a unique style of presenting which makes it interesting, informative, and engaging. Bernard can see the best in people and more importantly gets the best out of people. Whatever Innovation journey you are on, Bernard is the link that ties it all together.

DONAGH KEON

Managing Director, Erne Fresh Foods

Pulvinar pellentesque habitant morbi tristique. Diam vel quam elementum pulvinar. Arcu ac tortor dignissim convallis aenean.

RUSSEL THORNTON

UX Designer

At ultrices mi tempus imperdiet nulla malesuada. Turpis egestas sed tempus urna et pharetra pharetra massa della massa.

MILTON LOPEZ

Back-End Developer

Knowledge Transfer Concepts

Bridging Generations

Bernard helps organisations understand how essential knowledge—skills, insights, and practical know-how—moves from one generation of staff to the next. He combines historical lessons with modern examples to show how ideas evolve and how meaning is shared across teams.

His approach helps leaders capture what matters, communicate it clearly, and use it to spark new opportunities.

CASE STUDY: CORNING

BOOK A DISCOVERY CALL

Upcoming projects

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY ONLINE LECTURE SERIES: Alexander Graham Bell and the Telephone 150 years later.

Explore how the telephone sparked a communication revolution — and what modern innovators can learn from it.

LEARN MORE

UPCOMING

This site is updated regularly with our upcoming events.

Upcoming online Lecture Series

This course explores Alexander Graham Bell’s groundbreaking 1875 concept for transmitting sound over an electric wire, his struggles to commercialize the telephone with his father-in-law, Gardiner Hubbard, and his rivalry with inventors Elisha Gray and Thomas Edison. We will also examine the rise and fall of AT&T as a corporate giant and the evolution from wired networks to today’s cellular and smartphone technologies.

LEARN MORE / BOOK

Expertise & Ideas

Historical Insights for Today’s Innovators