The resident, and the bench behind him
Struinova Innovation is built around a simple promise: seasoned eyes, a proven method, and the right people for each engagement. A founder with three decades in the arena, and a growing bench of trusted associates working across North America, Europe, and Africa.
Ron Brumbarger builds things, fixes things, and teaches other people to see differently. He founded Bitwise Solutions in 1992 and led it for 27 years: roughly 1,100 clients, 3,000 engagements, three competitors acquired along the way, and design thinking installed as the firm's own operating model years before it was fashionable. He sold the company in 2018.
When Central Indiana's knowledge firms could not find talent, he treated the shortage as a ripe problem and built the answer: Apprentice University, an award-winning, competency-based institution that served some 250 students across eleven years before its sale in 2023. That is the Struinova pattern in miniature: name the real problem, then build what answers it.
The method beneath the pattern is certified and earned. Ron is a Senior Research Fellow with Basadur Innovation, one of a small global group, and a certified facilitator of the Simplexity creative problem-solving process. He has taught and facilitated on three continents: mission organizations in Ethiopia and Kenya, developer camps in Croatia, innovation leaders in Berlin, executive teams across the United States and Europe. Taylor University named him its first Entrepreneur in Residence.
And then there is the proof most consultants cannot offer: Ron has worked two cold case homicides alongside law enforcement. The first ran on the Simplexity method alone. The second paired Simplexity with AI, surfaced new leads in a 25-year-old file, and was presented to the International Homicide Investigators Association. If the method moves a case detectives stared at for a quarter century, it can move your market.
He holds a degree in robotics, a US patent, and the pen behind You're Always Being Interviewed. He co-founded the How Might We Collective. He is, depending on the day, a facilitator, a professor, an investigator, and a fellow founder who has genuinely sat in your chair.
Sometimes it's Ron. Sometimes it's a team.
The method is constant.
When an engagement calls for more hands, we bring trusted associates: facilitators, designers, technologists, and operators we have worked beside for years, including partners from the How Might We Collective. Each one is chosen for the engagement in front of us, not billed to it by default, and the bench grows as Struinova does.
Whether you get one facilitator or five, you get the same methodology, the same vocabulary, and the same standard: your team leaves stronger than we found it.