Jack Dannemiller’s adage for life and work has served him well: “Discovery is seeing what everyone else is seeing but thinking what no one else thinks.”
For his MBA thesis at what’s now Case Western Reserve University, Dannemiller created the Professional Selling Skills training program that’s been used in a range of industries for more than 50 years.
As chairman and CEO of Applied Industrial Technologies, he brought innovative practices to the Cleveland-based distributor of industrial, motion and control technologies that led to tripling the company’s product types and expanding its global reach.
Now retired, Dannemiller serves on several nonprofit boards and co-authored a Christian book series.
He also has remained involved at the university, which, he said, taught him to “think better, pursue truth and develop [a] scientific method to see where the evidence leads.”
He has served on the visiting committee of the CWRU Larry Sears and Sally Zlotnick Sears think[box] innovation center. And, with his late wife, Jean, Dannemiller established a scholarship fund for engineering undergraduates and MBA students, knowing, as he recently said, that “a good education unlocks the door to opportunity.”
This piece, written by Jo Steigerwald, originally appeared in the Fall 2022 issue of Think Magazine.