PERL 2.0 Kearney · PERLab
Kearney PERLab · Product Excellence & Renewal

PERL 2.0

The next chapter of PERLab. Product and engineering expertise, accelerated by AI and built to compound across every engagement.

Powered by Velocity Measured with AEPD Originated in Global Innovators Days
Get started

Let's explore the possibilities

Tell us about a client or priority area, and we'll identify where PERL and Velocity deliver impact.

Explore

Three pillars behind PERL 2.0. Pick one to open its page.

01 · The capability

PERL 2.0, powered by Velocity

The end-to-end Agentic AI capability behind PERL delivery, and how to take it to clients.

Explore Velocity 02 · The diagnostic

AEPD

Assessment of Product & Design Excellence. A structured read on where a product stands.

See AEPD 03 · The origin

Global Innovators Days

Kearney's platform for entrepreneurship and creativity, where PERL was born.

Discover GID
← PERL 2.0 home01 · Powered by Velocity
Section 01 · The capability

PERL 2.0, powered by Velocity

PERL brings the product and engineering expertise. Velocity is the AI capability that accelerates how we imagine, build, scale and sustain better products, with human judgement still firmly in front, at half the time and half the cost across the analytical phase.

Three ways Velocity changes product cost, value and portfolio.

▼
Reduce product cost

Design-to-value

Practical changes that improve cost without touching what the customer values.

Architecture · materials · packaging · supply
▲
Improve the offer

Design-for-growth

Consumer signals and market evidence turned into sharper propositions.

Proposition · experience
◆
Optimise the portfolio

Platforming

Less variation and complexity, while protecting value for the customer and the business.

Harmonise · simplify · reuse
Diagnosis
Validated design & implementation pathway
02 · In practice

Client success stories.

Velocity works across the whole product lifecycle: Decide, Develop, Scale and Sustain. Three live product demos, with human judgement in front.

Decide · Market & portfolio

Compress the road from signal to concept.

From consumer and category signals to concepts, mock-ups and rapid testing with synthetic personas. That expands how many hypotheses a team can explore before committing expensive resources.

The shift isn't that AI can make an image. It's that the distance between an insight, a concept and a learning cycle is collapsing.
Demo · Decide
Consumer goods
Play the demo
Develop · Product & design engineering

Creation becomes reasoning.

Not everything called an agent is agentic. The real move is teaching a system how to do the work, through structured reasoning and PERL's methods, not just a clever prompt.

The breakthrough isn't what the model knows. It's that we can encode how the work should be done.
Demo · Develop
Automotive
Play the demo
Scale & sustain · Source, make & operate

From reasoning to running the operation.

Supply, quality and risk signals become live inputs, and the agent coordinates the response across systems, instead of a slide in next month's review.

Insight-to-action, without the quarter-late post-mortem.
Demo · Scale & sustain
Semiconductor
Play the demo
03 · With clients

Take it to your clients.

The mental model is simple: don't sell a tool, bring a capability. Here's how to position Velocity in front of a client.

Not a product

E2E Agentic AI capability

You're not licensing software. You're bringing an end-to-end PERLab capability powered by AI into how we deliver impact for clients.

Capability, not licence
Not a replacement

Experts stay in front

Agents do the repeated analytical work. The consultant and engineer stay accountable for the interpretation and the call.

Human in the loop
Not static

It gets smarter

Every engagement refines the model. The team you put behind a client this quarter is sharper than last.

Compounds over time
Ideas arrive 80–90% of the way there. Real logic and real process behind every output. Not AI slop.
Client data stays with the client. It never goes into our AI models; the models only run their analysis on it.
← PERL 2.0 home02 · The diagnostic
Section 02 · The diagnostic

Launching the AEPD

Assessment of Excellence in Product and Design.

The survey
10
DimensionsStrategy → Innovation → Cost → Execution
CXO
Audience
1
Hour
The value
◆
Competitive industry benchmark
◆
Product & Design Excellence Index (PDEX)
◆
Annual measurement of product ROI
← PERL 2.0 home03 · The origin
Section 03 · The origin

Global Innovators Days (GID)

Global Innovators Days brings ideas and colleagues together from across the firm in an extraordinary way, encouraging innovation, entrepreneurship and global collaboration in a design-sprint-style event. PERL was born here.

Why it works

Built on intrinsic motivation.

Traditional motivation leans on external carrot-and-stick incentives. Yet research shows those approaches fit poorly with the conceptual, creative work that matters most today. Real motivation comes from self-directed devotion to continually improve at something that matters.

GID taps into three intrinsic motivations:

Autonomythe desire to direct our own lives
Masterythe urge to get better and better
Purposeto do what we do in service to something larger than ourselves
Platforms born at GID
IGNITEPart of Kearney’s Innovate network, building fully operational business concepts from the customer’s perspective.
PERLabThe product excellence & renewal platform, born at GID in 2017.
PACTThe people analytics platform, turning people data into how the organisation is planned, designed and transitioned.
Velocity AIGID 2025’s first-place initiative, and the agentic AI capability behind PERL 2.0.1st place · Dubai 2025
GID 2025 · Dubai · May 14–16

Winning teams reshaping how we deliver for clients.

This year's edition in Dubai showcased innovation and strategic thinking from across the firm. The top three initiatives:

1 1st place

Velocity AI

Agentic AI product-development tool to radically reduce time to market.

Led by Kushal Fernandes and the PERLab team, Velocity AI is a groundbreaking ecosystem of 20+ AI-powered tools spanning the entire product-development lifecycle. With proven success at clients like Daimler, Cuisinart and HP, it positions Kearney at the forefront of AI-driven product transformation.

TeamRoss Brinkman · Kushal Fernandes · Kamalesh Giri · Marco Kapetan · Bhavya Shanker · Brielle Weiner
2 2nd place

The Innovation Studio

Tapping into start-up ecosystems to shape the future of corporations.

Spearheaded by Brunna Seabra and Sebastian Drescher, the Innovation Studio offers a structured “Pilot as a Service” model that bridges AI innovation and enterprise adoption. With $2M in proven revenue and strong partner backing, it transforms how corporates source, test and scale AI solutions.

TeamSebastian Drescher · Evan Gutoff · Brunna Seabra · Selena Suarez · Daniela Tello · Si Yan Zheng
3 3rd place

ROOT & Agriculture Insights Lab

Unifying agricultural data streams to unlock value across the ag value chain.

Preston Fay’s ROOT capability is revolutionizing agricultural analytics, with geospatial and AI-driven insights across 95% of US ag retailers. Already deployed with tier-1 clients, ROOT builds Kearney’s leadership in the $80B agricultural input market.

TeamAmanda Bushell · Preston Fay · Lainey McInnis · John Roquet
A decade of editions

From IGNITE in 2013 to Velocity AI in 2025.

2013 · FounderJoe RaudabaughCreated GID
→
2018 · Led GIDEric GervetNow Partner Emeritus
→
2025 · CurrentBharat Kapoor
Susheel SethumadhavanCurrent lead
2013IGNITE · GID createdFounded
2014LondonPCE Labs (IGNITE)
2015Berlin · San FranciscoSupercharging Next-Gen Supply Chains
2017Chicago · AmsterdamPERLab
2018ParisKearney Answers
2019Seattle · BarcelonaCircular Hub
2022AmsterdamPRISM
2024ChicagoAgent Tom
2025Dubai · May 14–16Velocity AI