Plucking a few handfuls of the weed –thinking all the while, what can I make with this? — the engineer climbed back into his car, drove to his house and headed straight for the garage. Eyes lit up, he patiently fed milkweed stems into a battered spinning wheel he kept handy for such an occasion. The milkweed thread that spun out the other end was light and fluffy, but far from a breakthrough. The engineer, an experimenter to the core, headed inside his home, his curiosity satisfied.

To strategy consulting firm Jump Associates, the engineer’s story was more than just an amusing anecdote. It was clear evidence — a sign of a larger pattern — that the performance textiles fibers industry was filled with people who like to get their hands dirty, who love their craft and who value experimentation. Against all preconceived notions of how modern manufacturing works, the fibers industry turns out to be deeply artisanal.

The milkweed story also helped Jump, a firm that helps companies create new value by meeting the needs of real people in creative and compelling ways, show leaders at General Electric Co. (GE) why the organization’s efforts to provide turnkey solutions would continue to fall flat in the fibers market. Jump showed GE that in order to break into the fibers industry, it needed to work closely with customers from the earliest stages of development, co-creating breakthrough solutions instead of offering up new products on a platter. This was a reframe, a fundamentally new way of seeing a market and the key actors within it.

Following Jump’s recommendations, GE adopted the strategy and quickly became a trusted collaborative partner within the industry, creating enough new value in the market to meet its five-year revenue target in just 18 months. In the process, GE learned Jump’s methods for defining new growth platforms by connecting its own capabilities to the needs of real people.

Reframing Challenges, Stepping into the Unknown, Developing a Sense of Empathy

Ten years ago, Dev Patnaik, Neal Moore, Udaya Patnaik, and Robert Becker founded Jump in order to practice a fundamentally new kind of strategy consulting fueled by empathy and executed through a hybrid process fusing social science, design, and business strategy. Now entering its second decade, Jump continues to identify new markets, reinvent existing categories, and develop new sources of revenue for its clients.

Witness Target’s remarkable success in back-to-school sales. When Target asked Jump to help transform its back-to-school performance from good to great, Jump identified going off to college as a key moment that resonates with parents and kids of all ages. Working closely with Target’s design team, Jump created new product platforms that changed the face of the back-to-school season. In the first year of the program alone, Target’s third quarter sales grew 12 percent while competitors’ sales remained flat or dropped.

Wrangler Jeans experienced a similar breakthrough. Having won the hearts of American cowboys shortly after its inception in 1947, Wrangler wanted to reconnect with its core consumers following decades of dramatic change in the American cultural landscape. To find the right opportunities, a team of Jumpsters and Wrangler folks visited ranches and attended rodeos, experiencing the life of true American cowboys and cowgirls. As a result, the team learned how to create new fashions that better fit into their customers’ lives. The impact has been considerable: Women’s Wrangler sales have enjoyed double-digit growth annually since the project’s conclusion, with a single one of Jump’s product recommendations accounting for more than half of the women’s wear sales increase.

In addition to immediate impact, Jump helps clients drive lasting change and develop new strategic capabilities while also delivering near-term results. After working with Jump for several years, Target developed an internal strategy group modeled on its collaborations with the firm. Likewise, Wrangler established an internal ethnography department modeled on Jump’s immersive research approach to help guide the future of the brand.

These companies and many others — including General Mills, Harley-Davidson and Steelcase — turn to Jump to create new value streams, thrive in new markets and define new growth platforms. In fact, Fast Company recently added Jump clients Hewlett-Packard, General Electric, Nike, Target and Proctor & Gamble to its Fast 50 list of the most innovative companies worldwide.

Having partnered with many of the world’s top organizations, Jump understands that empathy — the ability to reach outside of oneself and see the world through the eyes of another — is the intangible factor that helps successful companies see new opportunities before their competitors, take a chance on something new before it can be validated quantitatively and stick with unproven ideas when they haven’t yet landed.

Pride in History, Anticipation for the Future

Today, the company’s San Mateo, Calif. headquarters — known as JumpSpace, a flexible, interactive environment that fosters collaboration and creativity — houses more than 50 hybrid thinkers.

But when Jump was incorporated in 1998, it had a decidedly start-up feel to it. In that first year, the founders incorporated Jump and landed their first gig, a week of consulting with Steelcase. A year later, with one additional employee on payroll, Steelcase was a steady client. Next, Jump began fostering business relationships with new clients such as Target and Nike, relationships that still exist today.

Word was out: Media ranging from Fast Company to The New York Times began regularly knocking on Jump’s door. Jumpsters were also invited to deliver a unique perspective on the intersection of technology, business and culture at forums including AIGA, the Design Management Institute, Fast Company RealTime, IDSA and the Rotman School of Management.

Jump’s business culture, which is aimed at unleashing the potential of its employees, was also recognized. In 2008, Jump was awarded the honor of being named one of Wall Street Journal’s Top Small Workplaces alongside such small giants as New Belgium Brewing and the Rain Forest Alliance.

This summer, JumpSpace opened its doors for a 10th anniversary celebration, hosting renowned speakers from business and academia, including Amy Edmondson of Harvard Business School, trendmaster Robyn Waters, creativity expert Jim Adams, Nike Innovation Director Dave Schenone, innovation academic Andy Hargadon and HP Design vice president Sam Lucente, among many other luminaries. Two days of thought-provoking presentations and collaborative discussion left Jumpsters, their clients and their friends invigorated, motivated and inspired.

In January 2009, Jump’s story will continue to unfold when founder and managing associate Dev Patnaik releases his first book, Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy (Financial Times Press), a provocative take on commerce that suggests: It’s not just business — it’s personal.

About Jump

Jump Associates is a strategy consulting firm that partners with clients such as GE, P&G, and Nike to create new value in a changing world. Since its inception in 1998, Jump has grown from a small firm to a company of 50 full-time ‘Jumpsters’. Jump partners with visionary leaders to identify new markets, reframe existing categories, and define new products by connecting client capabilities to the needs of ordinary people in the world. Jump also guides clients to repeat success by helping them cultivate their own cultures of innovation. Jump has helped some of the world’s most admired companies to stay ahead of the competition, develop more sustainable approaches to growth, and rediscover the reasons they got into business in the first place.

The Jump Approach

Hybrid Thinking draws on a variety of disciplines to solve the complex problems facing companies today. Jump Associates uses social science techniques to reframe business problems in terms of what keeps ordinary folks in the world up at night. Jump uses design methods to help companies connect with those people’s lives through compelling new products, services and businesses. And Jump uses business strategy to create actionable roadmaps for sustaining success over time.