For thirty years, CDI has helped its client companies improve their new product development skill sets, processes, decision-making abilities and new product success rates. Since its founding, CDI has specialized in organic growth and new product development for industrial, high tech, chemical, medical, software, and business-to-business firms. Our client base is Fortune 500 corporations, European-headquartered companies and middle market firms.

James D. Hlavacek, PhD, has more than 35 years of industrial experience and is an internationally recognized executive educator, businessman, and industrial strategy consultant. He has a unique combination of business experience, practical publications, presentation skills, and academic credentials. Jim Hlavacek is the Managing Director of Market Driven Management™ and chairman and CEO of The Corporate Development Institute, Inc. based in Charlotte, North Carolina. His firm has major clients that include Alcoa, AlliedSignal, AMP, Atofina, BASF, Bendix, Cabot, Caterpillar, Cincinnati Milacron, Cytec, Degussa, Delphi Systems, Diebold, Engelhard, H.B. Fuller, Gardner Denver, General Electric, Goulds Pumps, Henkel, Hexion Specialty Chemicals, Hewlett-Packard, ICI, ITT, ITW,, Kennametal, Loctite, Johnson Polymer, MeadWestvaco, Miller Electric, Morgan Crucible, National Starch and Chemical, Packard Hughes Electronics, Parker Hannifin, Rohm and Haas, Saint Gobain, Sandvik, and The Timken Company.

Jim is a frequent speaker and workshop leader at national and global company meetings. He has authored five books including the best-seller, Market Driven Management, co-authored with B. Charles Ames. His most recent book is Profitable Top-Line Growth for Industrial Companies. He has written more than forty practical articles on technical marketing, technology, strategy, and business development that have appeared in leading publications, including five in the Harvard Business Review.

For twenty years, Dr. Hlavacek was the editor-in-chief of Industrial Marketing Management, the leading international journal of industrial marketing published in New York and The Netherlands. He is a past vice president and director of the American Marketing Association, was chairman of the marketing department at Case Western Reserve University and was formerly the director of The Institute for Executive Education at Wake Forest University. In his earlier career, he was in technical service and sales with Hooker Chemical, now called OxyChem. Dr. Hlavacek has conducted management development programs at many universities including Columbia, Penn State, Stanford, Wisconsin, The London Business School and Tokyo University. He has received numerous teaching awards from industrial and high-tech executives. He has developed and presented more than 1,500 in-house executive programs to help make technical marketing and technology the entrepreneurial compass and growth vehicle for industrial firms around the world. About half of his management development growth workshops are conducted outside of North America.

Jim Hlavacek was born in Hinsdale, Illinois. He received a BS degree in Chemistry from Southern Illinois University, an MBA in Industrial Engineering from Louisiana Tech, and a PhD in Industrial Marketing from the University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign. Jim is on the Board of Directors of Nucor Steel, Mueller Systems, and Xtek. He has three adult children and resides with his wife in Charlotte, North Carolina.