Mark Payne Email Address

Founder

Fahrenheit 212 is a global innovation strategy and design firm focused on creating sustainable, profitable growth for our clients.

As a frontline innovation leader with twenty years as co-founder and president of innovation consultancy Fahrenheit 212, and now as Global Head of Consumer Products at frog design, Mark Payne has spearheaded innovation efforts that have created billions in top-line growth for Fortune 500 companies, entrepreneurial emerging businesses and Private Equity firms. At Fahrenheit 212, he shaped the firm’s unique ‘Money & Magic’ philosophy, its outcome-based business model, and its breakthrough method of marrying analytical commercial strategy with consumer-centered creativity – a combination of elements that led the firm to be described as ‘The Innovator’s Paradise’ by Fortune, a ‘White Hot Idea Factory’ by BusinessWeek, the ‘Epicenter of Innovation’ by Esquire and ‘Melding the Best of McKinsey & IDEO’ by Fast Company. In 2021, Fahrenheit 212 joined forces with frog design, becoming the backbone of frog’s rapidly growing strategy practice, bringing our clients a uniquely potent combination of strategy, tech mastery and design – allowing us to not only conceive breakthrough strategies and innovations, but to build things and bring them to realization. Mark’s insights on innovation’s past, present and future have been captured in the book How to Kill a Unicorn (Random House/Crown Business, http://www.howtokillaunicorn.com), and have been featured in leading media outlets including Fast Company, Wired, Fortune, CNBC, BusinessWeek, Monocle and Esquire, and via speaking engagements at Harvard Business School, Wharton, Columbia Business School, NYU, The Royal Society of the Arts, Pratt Institute of Design, HEC Paris, and innovation leadership conferences at many top tier companies. Mark holds a BA cum laude in economics and psychology from Middlebury College, is a member of Mensa, has board roles with Ecologic Solutions and the Teaching Empathy Institute, is a fintech investor, and a mentor to a portfolio of startups. Specialties: Transformational Innovation, Growth Strategy, Private Equity, Unlocking Human Creativity, Health & Wellness, Beauty, Financial Services, Consumer Electronics, Luxury Goods, Food & Beverage.