Tucker Marion
Director of the Capital Activation Lab
Tucker Marion is the Director of the Capital Activation Lab at the Defense Industrial Base Institute (DIBI).
At Northeastern University, he holds a joint faculty appointment in the D’Amore-McKim School of Business and the College of Engineering. He has led academic groups, launched new graduate programs, and built cross-college platforms integrating business, engineering, and design. He currently serves as the Faculty Director of Northeastern’s Master’s in Product Management program and previously served as Partnership Innovation Director, where he helped create interdisciplinary initiatives such as the MSx platform and the Master of Science in Innovation—each designed to meet the demands of a fast-changing economy.
His academic profile is strengthened by more than 25 years of innovation leadership outside academia. He co-founded Ada IQ, an AI-driven product design platform, and FlashPoint Development, a consultancy focused on product strategy and engineering. At the Innovation Factory, he served as Chief Development Officer, delivering successful consumer products from concept through launch. Earlier in his career, he led engineering and product teams at Visteon and Ford Motor Company, gaining deep experience in large-scale product development and manufacturing innovation.
He has run executive workshops and bootcamps in design thinking, innovation strategy, and corporate venturing for clients ranging from U.S. government agencies to global technology firms. These programs integrate research, real-world insight, and hands-on application and draw directly from his academic work.
His interdisciplinary research has been published across leading journals in business, engineering, and design, including the Journal of Product Innovation Management, Journal of Business Venturing, Journal of Mechanical Design, Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, Design Studies, Design Science, and IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management.
He is passionate about building programs and initiatives that connect disciplines, industries, and ideas—believing that the most exciting advances in innovation emerge at the intersections of fields.