“At the starting point of this interview, Paul Akers, CEO of FastCap in Ferndale (a global enterprise with 900 products in 40 countries, estab. 1997) spoke from Shanghei with Managing Editor Mike McKenzie through FaceTime on their iPhones. Akers was wrapping up an “around-the-world” sojourn. At the finishing point of the interview, face-to-face, after a short time back home, he was leaving the next morning for Dubai to start his third circuitous global trip this year. While biting into a 5 o’clock snack of an apple at the FastCap facility, Akers personified the energy and excitement that leaps off your screen when you visit the FastCap website. “Do I seem the same in person as I do on the videos?” he asked. Without question. He walks the talk. He climbs mountains, literally and figuratively. Innovation is his field, his niche, his passion.

Enjoy this around-the-world of business walk and talk that wanders through garbage bins seeking bicycle parts, through selling flowers on a street corner, crafting guitars, Baptist ministry, teaching high school…then into invention and entrepreneurial business, flying his plane across oceans, and finally into learning Lean and now spreading word as a teacher and evangelist for Lean thinking, practices, and culture (hence, the globetrotting as a consultant, and the popular book 2 Second Lean). Ready to innovate? Here’s your inspiration…”

01.26.16 | Categories: FastCap, Lean