Innovation Engineering, as a movement, began in 2010. However, the learning behind it and the experiments that are its foundation have been developed over the past 40 years. The original idea for Innovation Engineering was sparked by the work of Dr. W Edwards Deming who was the American Statistician credited with helping rebuild Japan after World War II. The founder of Toyota said, “Dr. Deming is the core of our management.”

Eureka! applied the system approach of Deming to innovation at Procter & Gamble where the team set a record creating and shipping into live market tests nine innovations in twelve months. It was then applied to multi-national companies such as Nike, Walt Disney, Pepsi, Hewlett Packard, and American Express increase innovation speed and decrease risk. One thing that separates Eureka! from other innovation experts is a relentless focus on measurement, statistical analysis, and development of reproducible systems of innovation. To that end, over the past 30 years the Eureka! team has conducted quantitative research and live experiments on over 26,000 innovation concepts, over 15,000 teams and over 100,000 individuals during the process of creating and commercializing innovations.

In 2006, Innovation Engineering was accepted as a new field of study and leadership science, with it's first course taught at the University of Maine. Now it's taught as an undergraduate minor and major certificate program in 20 universities across the US and Canada. In 2010 it was made commercially available for individuals and companies through courses, tools and projects applying this new discipline.