Good fortune led me into global business with Continental Grain, operating at different times from bases in Europe, North, and South America. Management assignments advanced me steadily from simple to complex operations and finally to global, country manager. Under me, operations involved trade and all else supporting trade—contracts, competitive intelligence, credit, facility leases, surface freight, construction, finance, fraud prevention and capture, HR, tracking suppliers, markets, weather, price hedges, insurance, laboratory management, manufacturing, industrial processing, price discovery, quality control, supply chain monitoring, shipping, and distribution to other nations' retail outlets, strategic partners, dealing with officialdom, politicians, and unions, plus day-to-day oversight. My skill is taking non-standardized things and standardizing them. Agribusiness like High tech has the highest performance standards in the world with thin margins, immediate cause and effect, 24/7. Thanks are due the "Giants" who helped me grow in that experience, understanding, instincts, and competences. Global trade's key lesson was that information, valuable for the full range of business interests, abounds anywhere, any time, when its seekers are alert and know how to listen. Our time frame is “now” not days, with immediate accountability. My array of work challenges occurred in JV's and in privately owned, fully, vertically-and-horizontally integrated, firms. The risks across far-flung, time zones ruled out standard workdays and required P & L management to the fullest. That skill set allowed me to co-found a Swiss Trading company with operating assets in S. America. The skills and talents around this sector demanded thinking ahead operationally to see around corners. With both the big, long-term, organizational picture and with short-term operations, that in turn means planning each step, with contingency fall backs, should events go awry, so as to minimize adverse outcomes and control costs, while most critically building revenues, customer, and supplier relationships. Not fail safe, but enough to keep ahead. In that vein, I was a co-founder and built a renewable energy and emissions trading firm here in Houston, Element Markets from an idea. In summation, my innovation skills include; managing the dragons and unknowns of manufacturing, sales, training, engineering, logistics, verification, from agribusiness, to defense, IT, energy, tech, petrochemical, distribution and regulatory compliance.