Rapid Learning Cycles Institute
We help innovators get their best ideas to market — faster!
How Rapid Learning Cycles Deliver Faster Innovation with Less Frustration
You are all about science-driven innovation and product development — that gets out into the world faster so that your customers reap the rewards sooner.
Whether you are a team member, project leader or senior leader, we have a proven framework to accelerate innovation that works with your existing processes — to the extent that you need processes. Companies from startups to Fortune 100 have adopted Rapid Learning Cycles to deliver the innovation they need most.
Our sweet spot is science-driven innovation that rests upon a foundation of research & development into customer insights, ground-breaking technologies and novel business models. We know how to transform discoveries into physical products as rapidly as possible, with fewer delays, cost overruns and disappointments.
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Explore
Elements of Rapid Learning Cycles
Experiment with the concepts of Rapid Learning Cycles on your existing programs to explore how the framework can help you.
Launch Your First RLC Project
Global Project Leader Certification
Prepare to lead your first full program using the Rapid Learning Cycles framework.
Rapid Learning Cycles Accelerate Innovation
You see your teams getting mired in obstacles from unexpected problems and unable to hit their dates.
You are being told you need to be more "Agile” but have questions about what that means in a technology-driven environment for physical products with long lead times and complex dependency chains.
You don't have time to release a disappointing product into the market, and then iterate until it works. Your customers expect your products to deliver immediate value — and business leaders expect on-time delivery and predictable success.
Rapid Learning Cycles works by eliminating the root causes of product delays, cost overruns and disappointing results. Teams identify and focus on the major decisions that will drive a product's success to build the knowledge they need to make better decisions that stick. That sets them up for a smooth glide path through execution to launch with fewer rework loops, unanticipated obstacles and much less churn.
You Don't Have to Change Everything — and You Shouldn't
If you are going to make a change to how you deliver innovation, it needs to pay off. It needs to build on what you already do, with minimum disruption. The Rapid Learning Cycles framework enhances the processes you use to get products out faster, more predictable and more innovative.
Instead of changing the overall structure of development, Rapid Learning Cycles changes how developers and leaders think about the decisions they need to make, and the knowledge they need to make those decisions with confidence. Some things may move earlier, and others may move later but we understand that a physical product has a defined path from idea to launch.
We don't force-fit ideas from other disciplines that don't fit. We don't ask you to rip up your organizations or your processes and start over, as if you could. We understand that you have to get better at innovation while you deliver on your commitments.
How We Fulfill Them
The Rapid Learning Cycles
Online Community
When you join us, you’ll receive regular bulletins and access to our library of resources to help you experiment, pilot a team and then reap the benefits of the framework.
Members include anyone who has attended a workshop or online learning experience, registered a copy of The Shortest Distance Between You and Your New Product, or signed up for a membership on our website.
Online and In Person
Learning and Support
Every online or in person learning experience includes support to overcome implementation challenges and guidance for how to maximize the value of the framework in the context of your specific program and organization.
The Rapid Learning Cycles Certification Workshop for Global Project Leaders
Our flagship online certification workshop will help your program leaders succeed with the Rapid Learning Cycles framework from their first program. For a small to medium company, this could be enough to transform product development into an innovation engine. For a larger company, this workshop will help you establish a pilot program to learn before going bigger.
The Rapid Learning Cycles Certified® Professionals Community
Once program managers have completed the two-day workshop and met other certification standards, they become members of the Rapid Learning Cycles Certified® Professionals community. We support this community with online and in person events to continue to build competency, share best practices and develop the framework.
About Katherine Radeka
Katherine Radeka is the founder and executive director of the Rapid Learning Cycles Institute, and supports a growing global community of Rapid Learning Cycles Certified® Professionals who are actively using the framework to get their best ideas to market faster.
She has worked with companies on every continent except Antarctica, and in industries from aerospace to medical devices and pharmaceuticals to consumer electronics and alternative energy.
In 2015, Katherine published the first edition of The Shortest Distance Between You and Your New Product. Her first book, The Mastery of Innovation, was published in 2012 and won the Shingo Research Award. Her most recent book, High Velocity Innovation was published in Fall 2019 by Career Press.
Katherine has climbed seven of the tallest peaks in the Cascade Mountains and spent ten days alone on the Pacific Crest Trail until an encounter with a bear convinced her that she needed a change in strategic direction.