Ann Arbor’s Inovo has announced that they have acquired St. Joseph-based consultancy DASO Consultancy. The merged consultancy will be called Inovo according to the officials.

The founders of Inovo are Larry Schmitt and Steve Schwartz. The firm has developed a niche in management, innovation and technology consulting.

“We view this as a very, very complementary merger and it just allows us to do more stuff,” Schmitt said in an interview with AnnArbor.com. “We’re seeing a lot of activity in the market right now. We’re seeing a lot of requests of companies wanting to do stuff in the innovation area, so it gives us the opportunity to address all that.”

Inovo has also partnered with a consultancy based in India. They have also partnered with UM to work on curriculum strategies.

Terms of the merger were not discussed in public but according to DASO consulting partner Brian Christian, the four partners will each have an equity stake at the new company.

The two companies will maintain their separate offices as of now. DASO targets the Chicago area.

According to Christian this merger is beneficial to both companies since they share the same objectives.

“It gives us the combined toolkit that now we can market to our client base and also gives us more scale to do project execution,” Christian said. “It’s a marriage of complementary capabilities in the same basic space of innovation.”

Inovo’s clients have included firms like Dow Chemical, Ford Motor Co. and Johnson Controls.

“The mission of Inovo is to help organizations develop new-to-the-world products, services and business models that create economic and social value,” the new firm said in a press release. “In addition, we are committed to advancing state-of-the-art innovation tools and processes and helping organizations develop their internal innovation strategy, culture and capabilities.”

Find an Ann Arbor Business in the Directory of Ann Arbor, MI.