Communiqué
Scripps College Alum Wins Konneker Medal for Commercialization and Entrepreneurship
By: Tom Hodson
Posted on:
Scripps College alumnus (1993) Winston Breeden III won this year’s Konneker Medal for Commercialization and Entrepreneurship. This is an award given by Ohio University to recognize current and former faculty and students who have demonstrated excellence in innovation, invention, commercialization and entrepreneurship.
The award is named for Wilfred Konneker, a noted Ohio University alumnus who had a superior lifetime record of research and entrepreneurship.
Breeden is the Chief Executive Officer of Winston Products, LLC founded in Cleveland, Ohio in 2004. It now has more than 50 employees and promotes numerous inventions and innovations through retail stores such as Lowe’s, Home Depot, Target and many others.
Breeden says he is always looking for good ideas and inventions that can be commercialized quickly and speeded to market.
To be successful at innovation and entrepreneurship, Breeden says that one must “get over the fear of failure.” To fail, he says, is a learning proposition that ultimately makes a product better and stronger.
He claims that every day he assesses what he does poorly or what a product does poorly and then he eliminates those weaknesses with innovations and staff to correct the problems.
Breeden constantly has the “end user” of his products in mind when he designs them and commercializes them.
One observer described Winston Products, as follows: “Problem solving has been the key to success as Winston Products designs solutions with the end consumer in mind.”
As a student at Ohio University, Breeden added elements of industrial design, engineering and business marketing to his communication degree. He wanted a broad-based education.
Even within the Scripps College of Communication he took courses from Media Arts and Studies, Journalism, and Communication Studies. He was an early adopter of a multidiscipline education and still is a strong proponent of that approach.