About Us
At Palo Alto Innovation Lab, we specialize in providing evidence-based consulting services that elevate social impact enterprises worldwide. Impact with returns. With our unique FIRE scaling methodology, we offer tailored coaching and support to entrepreneurs and organizations seeking to make a difference. Our extensive experience across Latin America, Mexico, Africa, and Asia distinguishes us in the industry, enabling us to drive sustainable, impactful change.
Our mission is to empower social impact enterprises by leveraging innovative strategies and proven, evidence-based methodologies. Through personalized coaching and guidance, we help our clients achieve their goals and maximize their potential for positive change. At Palo Alto Innovation Lab, we are committed to driving social innovation and fostering community growth worldwide.
FIRE (Fit, Ingredients, Recipe, Execution) is our unique, proven methodology to assist founders in understanding and preparing for all the aspects of scaling. FIRE has helped many founders assess their readiness to scale and design strategies for long-term growth by creating strategies that combine high impact with top-tier business tools for managing supply chains, costs, customer service, and innovation to profitably address underserved markets. Combining excellent business processes and acumen to achieve impact at scale is daunting —but it can be done.
Harvard Innovation Labs has chosen Rob to mentor Harvard's students and faculty with scaling mentoring and guidance.
EYElliance and other organizations engage Rob Shelton, originator of FIRE and founder of Palo Innovation Labs and Scale Conundrum, to guide and mentor their enterprises to grow impact through astute business practices, investibility, and fortitude.
FIRE: Essential Questions Every Founder Should Ask
Start With the Big Picture: What Is Scaling, Really?
Scaling isn’t just growth. It’s replicating your impact at a larger, often more complex level. Scaling shifts you from working in your company to working on your company. Founders often underestimate how much they need to evolve during scaling. As Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, once said, “You get a new job every six months.” Scaling changes your team, your strategy—and your leadership identity. So if you're asking, "Am I ready to scale?" consider reframing it to: "Is my organization ready—and am I ready to become the leader it needs next?"
Four Crucial Questions
1. Where Will Your First and Best Scaling Market Be? Start by identifying the best-fit new market—geographically or by customer segment—based on the likelihood of success. Ask yourself: Is the “job to be done” in the new market the same as in your current market?
2. Is Your Business Model Mature Enough? Scaling before your business model is fully developed can sink your enterprise. FIRE helps you assess six areas of readiness and provides prototyping tools to improve each:•Product/service excellence (not just “good enough”)
• Operational efficiency and repeatability
• Strong decision-making systems and metrics
• Sustainable customer acquisition cost vs. lifetime value
• Talent recruitment and retention capabilities
• Leadership’s ability to balance core operations with growth
3. What Makes You Different—and What Should Stay the Same? Identify the non-negotiables of your model—the core differentiators that make customers love your product and service. What characteristics must remain constant as you expand? Which elements can and should adapt? Understanding your differentiation lets you scale with confidence without diluting your core identity.
4. Are You Organizationally Ready to Execute? Scaling demands more than ambition. It requires operational muscle. This includes:
• Team capacity and processes to handle a surge in complexity
• Cash flow planning to bridge the gap between growth and revenue
• A clear sense of which systems will break and when
• Leadership requirements.
In a FIRE engagement, I will collaborate with you in 5-6 one-hour videoconference sessions, with homework between meetings, to address the 4 questions described above. At the end, you will have a much deeper understanding of what scaling requires and your role, a detailed assessment of your readiness, and a tailored strategy and execution plan.
Duration 6-8 weeks. Cost: USD 5,000.
Our Success Stories
You have been an invaluable mentor and friend throughout this journey! I wouldn't be here if not for your help guiding us through the ups and downs of scaling impact. Thank you!
It is really valuable to me to be able to talk about the complexities of what we are trying to do. Working with you, we are able to dig into the real issues around scaling, including structuring and financing, because you are already there—you understand all the facets of scaling.
Katherine Lucy, CEO, Solar Sister
We're thrilled to share that Bottleyes has expanded to three new countries and successfully secured capital from globally recognized funds, including the IDB | Inter-American Development Bank.
I deeply appreciate the role you played in our formation, which laid the foundation for this remarkable startup.
Isaac Romero, Founder and CEO, Bottleyes
"The scaling program provided guidance and mentorship at a level beyond a standard mentorship or accelerator program. Focused on tackling the roadblocks to growth, the scaling program helped us step back from our day-to-day and identify unique issues and solutions to problems challenging our specific business.
It was customized to meet us right where we were and create a useful, action-oriented guiding plan to scale effectively despite our previous growth roadblocks.
Alicia Wallace, CEO and Founder, All Across Africa-Kazi
MyFIRE mentors provided me not only knowledge and expertise but also
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Courage to tread the unknown territory – from India to Africa
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Confidence that I am not alone in this journey; they are with me
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Critical Analytical Power – by asking difficult questions
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Creative Mind by encouraging me to find new ways to address global issues
Jitendra Sinha, Founder and CEO, SAI
The FIRE scale-out masterclass mentoring opened us to broader possibilities and horizons from a global best practice standpoint – what we had not considered as a critical recipe for our scaling plan. The masterclass enabled us to strategically build and ground our corporate culture and business philosophy on continuous growth and innovation.
We thought we were ready (in terms of our structure, formation and strategies) to embark on our fundraising roadshow, before the mentoring sessions started. The third-party perspectives and inquiries the mentors brought into our business model and structure and the clarity in our storyline have immensely strengthened our go-to business operationalization structure and model – drawing on the mentors’ vast and diverse experiences and knowledge.
Femi Oye, Founder and CEO, OWatt
Clients
Our diverse clientele includes social impact entrepreneurs, non-profit organizations, and businesses dedicated to making a difference and impact through investable business models. Through our FIRE consulting services and coaching, we have enabled these clients to scale their impact, reach broader audiences, and create meaningful change in the communities they serve.
Our projects have scaled profitable enterprises in solar minigrids, sustainable agriculture, off-grid solar lighting, last-mile distribution, women's health, prescription eyeglasses for first-time wearers, plant-based meat substitutes, artisan crafts, clean water, early childhood education, and many other social impact areas.
Currently, we are also assisting emerging enterprises in building and scaling, including an XPrize winner that will take biodiversity management to a new level.
Your Biggest Scaling Decision: Buy, Build, or Leverage?
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/your-biggest-scaling-decision-buy-build-leverage-rob-shelton/?trackingId=htvga4bU9S0BCUc3S7IRGw%3D%3D
Making Innovation Work: How to Manage It, Measure It, and Profit from It
Rob Shelton
Rob is a globally recognized Silicon Valley-based adviser, author, and speaker on scaling and innovation excellence. Over the past forty years, he has been a trusted partner and adviser to hundreds of board members, CEOs, and senior executives at leading organizations and startups in Silicon Valley and worldwide. Rob is the founder of Scale Conundrum LLC and the Palo Alto Innovation Lab.
Rob is a board advisor, coach, program developer, and mentor for social enterprises providing for the under and un-served markets in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Rob is a scaling advisor and mentor at Harvard Innovation Lab and an advisor at the Harvard Climate Circle. At EYEliance, he is an integral team member, methodology creator, and mentor to scale a proven optical services and products business model to low- and middle-income first-time customers in Africa, SE Asia, and Latin America. He is co-founder and Senior Advisor for WeavingImpact, focused on tackling the racial wealth divide in US urban centers. His management, organizational, and financial, impact work includes enterprises involved in climate change, women’s health, sustainable agriculture, and improving lives of under- or un-served people.
Rob is the methodology creator and co-founder of the Scaling and Replication program at Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley—a social impact leader for 25 years. He led the innovation consulting practice at PwC and was the founder and leader of PwC’s global financial service innovation program. Before that, he was a senior executive and led global innovation programs at Stanford Research Institute (SRI International) and Arthur D. Little.
Rob co-authored Making Innovation Work, a best-selling book in its second publication that has been translated into ten languages.
A featured speaker at the 2013 World Economic Forum, Rob has addressed and coached scores of leading companies around the world regarding scaling, innovation, and integration of ES&G. His work has been highlighted in Bloomberg Businessweek, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Forbes Japan, Financial Times, BBC, strategy+business, CNN Financial News, Fast Company, and Bloomberg Radio, and NPR.
Rob was designated an Innovation Champion by the World Economic Forum and has been a speaker at the House of Commons and Stanford University, University of California, USC, Fudan University, MIT Media Labs, and Carnegie Mellon University.