Podcast

Ep. 33 - The Heart and Soul of Product Innovation with Bill Belcourt

Aaron Gerry

on Nov 13, 2024

• 3 min read

What goes into product innovation in climbing? Bill Belcourt shares insights from over 30 years in the industry.

🧊 About the episode

Passion, conviction, obsession. Heart and soul. Words to describe the devoted. Those driven to produce what had never existed before — a crusade to push the sport forward.

When Bill Belcourt talks product, you listen. The former head of R&D at Black Diamond, Bill helmed the department during the heydey, when anything was possible and all roads led to BD for product innovation. Chances are, if you’ve used BD climbing gear in the past 30 years, you’ve used Bill’s work.

Now, Bill leads Blue Ice - North America, where the work continues.

In this episode, we chat about:

🧊 Why product discovery is a life project, not a job
🧊 How finding your people can change everything
🧊 The lifecycle of innovation in business and industry
🧊 Life lessons from Randy Rackliff and Mark Twight

“Fortunes were thrown at trying to get there. Companies were laid waste at trying to get there. And it goes to show you the level of passion and conviction people had for these sports, that they were willing to sacrifice pretty much everything to make a contribution to them.”

🎁 Giveaway

Bill and Blue Ice are graciously giving away a new Stache Ice 50L and a pair of Harfang crampons.

👉 To enter:

In the conversation with Bill, be on the lookout for the answer to one of the following questions:

• What ice screw does Bill think was decades ahead of its time?
• What was the name of the after-hours R&D tinkering sessions at Black Diamond in the early days?

Once you have the answer:

1. Follow @blueiceclimbing and @ice_ice_beta on Instagram
2. DM the answer to one of the questions to @ice_ice_beta on Instagram
3. Comment on this post: “Blue Ice is the best kind of ice” once you’ve sent in your answer
4. Share the giveaway post to your story for an extra entry ⭐️
5. Winners will be randomly selected from submissions that meet all the rules on Monday, December 2! 📢

🧊 Resources and links

Bill isn’t really active on social media, so no point in sharing links. We didn’t talk about it in the episode, but Bill has been at the vanguard of paragliding in the U.S. for decades (and has several long-distance records). If you’d like to learn more about that facet of his life, this is a good podcast episode.

If you’d like to dive deeper into the (mythology?) of Black Diamond, I enjoyed this article from Outside, “Welcome to the Mutant Factory”.

And of course, if you’d like to support a climbing brand who is continuing the work, check out Blue Ice at blueice.com.

🧊 Credits

📸: Cover photo by Barry Blanchard.

Intro music by Hannah Noelle Enomoto (thanks, sis!). This episode was edited by Andrew Salomone of salomonesound.com.

🧊 Sponsors:

A huge thanks to Aniiu Gloves and Furnace Industries for supporting this show!

Aniiu Gloves: What do you get when you combine 30 years of ice climbing and product design chops? Well, if you’re into gloves you get Aniiu — a boutique climbing brand on a mission to produce the best ice climbing and drytooling gloves around. Doug, Jun, and the rest of the team spare no expense in the pursuit of durable, dextrous and waterproof. Best yet, they are made from recycled textiles — which saves waste from the landfill — and they are robustly built so they won’t end up there anytime soon. To learn more about your friend in the cold, head to aniiu.com. That is aniiu.com.

Furnace Industries: We get it, ice season never really ends… it just kinda blends between rock, plastic, and plywood until waterfalls freeze over again. No matter how you train in the off-season Furnace Industries keeps you going ‘til your next bout of screaming barfies. With their gym-safe DRY ICE Evolutions you can keep up your fitness indoors. And if you’re looking to challenge yourself on your homewall, they have the largest stock of drytooling holds in America. Check out their full lineup of ice and drytooling gear at furnace-Industries.com… where It’s Always Ice Season.