Applying MMM Lessons at Harry's

Liz Mooney returns to the MMM program to partner with students in its Business Innovation Lab to drive growth at the shaving and grooming products company.

Liz Mooney (MMM '19) routinely reminds herself of the most important lesson she learned as a student in Northwestern's MBA + MS Design Innovation (MMM) program — a dual-degree program between Northwestern Engineering and the Kellogg School of Management.  

Fall in love with a problem, not a solution.  

Mooney brings that mantra to her work as a senior brand manager at Harry’s, the shaving and grooming products company, where she's worked since March 2022. In that role, she works on the Upstream Innovation team to develop new products with the potential for significant profit growth.  

Now she's sharing that same lesson with current MMM students. This quarter, Mooney is collaborating with students in MMM's Business Innovation Lab (BIL), a capstone opportunity for students to flex the muscles they developed through their time in MMM. 

“We talk about how the sweet spot for innovation exists at the intersection of desirability, feasibility, and viability,” she said. “MMM taught me how to root all innovation, whether it be a huge new launch or a small change in price pack architecture, in desirability.”  

Viability means there's potential for profit, while feasibility means there is operational capability to support production. Desirability focuses on whether there is actually a consumer pain-point the new product would alleviate. Keying on desirability is at the core of human-centered design, a key tenet of the MMM program.  

That principle holds that the most useful products are the ones developed only after intense end-user research. Without it, products that meet the developers’ wants and needs tend to move forward rather than the ones that meet consumers’ wants and needs.  

The students in BIL are steeped in human-centered design, just as Mooney was by the time she reached that course.  

“The team we're working with has really robust experience outside of consumer goods, and I'm excited for them to bring a fresh lens to the pain-points our core consumer faces,” Mooney said. “I'm even more excited for the example they'll set for us in how to employ best-in-class design processes, which can serve as a North Star as we build our in-house Upstream Innovation muscle.”  

Building that muscle has been Mooney’s main task in her time at Harry’s. In her day-to-day, she works closely with cross-functional teams to identify the best potential opportunities rooted in unmet or underserved consumer needs. Her mission, then, is to rapidly develop and test ideas to fill those needs, bring the new products to market, learn from the results, and change the products as necessary.  

One of her main points of focus has been helping the company’s key stakeholders become more comfortable with the risks associated with innovation to promote agility and speed in developing new products. The lessons Mooney learned during her time in the MMM program have been the foundation of those efforts, she said.  

One class in particular stands out to her from her time as a student.  

“I loved our Visualization for Persuasion course,” she said. “It provided actionable, creative ways to storytell with data. I use lessons from that class every day.”  

Mooney has been happy to bring the students following in her footsteps into the change she’s trying to create at Harry’s. She said the opportunity presented by BIL is a valuable one for both students and company sponsors. 

“These experiences are helpful reps that build confidence in running an innovation process in the real world,” she said. “I'm excited for the solutions the students will identify.”