Eye on Innovation, Design and Technology

European Open Innovation Summit and Conference 2012

Open innovation is allowing R&D and innovation departments to collaborate with external groups in an effort to discover innovation earlier, easier and cheaper. While there are many challenges associated with collaboration and the sharing of ideas and resources, the desire is there to continue these groundbreaking initiatives.

The two-day European Open Innovation Summit and Conference 2012 will consist of informative case studies and interactive panel discussions led by the world’s top open innovation champions. The Conference will deliver a balance of high quality content together with networking activities for the exchange of ideas and best practices.

I am honored to have been selected as a speaker for this great conference and look forward to meet the European Open Innovation Community

The conference will take place on May 23 - 24, 2012 in Brussels, Belgium

Disruptive Innovation Management Framework Published on Innovation Excellence Website

My new framework for the management of Disruptive Innovation was just published on the Innovation Excellence website. Thanks for your interest! 

 

SXSWi Session: "Create More Value Than You Capture"

At the recent SXSW Festival I had the fortune to attend Andrew McAfee and Tim O'Reilly's excellent session: "Create more Value Than You Capture"

These is the summary I put together from the session tweet stream

 

Top Highlights of SXSWi: The "Techie" Awards

The SXSW Interactive “Techie” Awards

South By Southwest Interactive conference is over and it is now the time to do a recap.  This year we have decided to give awards that recognize the true highlight experiences of the conference. 

6. The Time Machine Award:  Thanks to the amazing new technology showcased at SXSW, the first experience of the conference was a trip back in time, to experience what a conference registration was in the mid 1980’s, complete with small pencils and green sheets of paper.  I can still feel the graphite on my fingers.  One wonders what they will do with this technology next year.  Perhaps they will take us back to the day when we could not connect our laptops to the internet wirelessly.

5. The Night Owl Award: The number of parties that claimed some sort of relationship to SXSW came close to exceeding the number of conference sessions.

4. The See and Be Seen Award: The Startup Village at the Hilton Hotel was the see and be seen place of SXSW

3. The Spring Break Bikini Contest Award: The myriad of official and unofficial startup quick pitch events became the equivalent of Fort Lauderdale’s bikini contests

2. The snake oil peddler’s award:  Some events claimed that for a small fee they would connect entrepreneurs with VC’s.  They used secret discount codes, “#VCSecrets” hashtags, last minute texts and change of venues to make it seem that they were some sort of exclusive club.  They were a colossal waste of time.

1. Most memorable product from SXSWi: “Poo Math” an Android app from Kayac Inc. showcased at SXSW’s trade show.  It is a unique and original way to teach math to your kids.  This is the text from an example

“Steve can’t hold his poo any longer. His house is 3 m away, and to get home in 5 minutes, at least how many meters per minute should he go?”

 

Summary of Innovation Leaders Forum Coverage

Summary of my coverage of the Innovation Leaders Forum and Conference 

Innovation Leaders Forum Uses An Online Approach To Create An Interactive Community

The Innovation Leaders Forum and Conference is taking place this week on Thursday, March 8 in Boston, MA.  While the caliber of speakers alone makes this conference worthwhile to attend, this conference is distinguishing itself from the ocean of new conferences on innovation in several ways:

1. It is encouraging interaction between attendees and speakers prior to the conference by providing an online forum to post ideas, questions and suggested topics. 
2. The forum format is meant to also drive the posting of answers to the issues raised
3. The conference organizers will use the input from the forum to set the topics for the afternoon workshops

Imaginatik, the main conference sponsor, has set up the online forum using their collaboration platform called Innovation Central.  The use of a forum like this prior to a conference represents a unique and innovative way to create far more than a conference but an interactive community. This should result in a better experience for all attendees and may even result in finding new and creative answers to the issues affecting the innovation community.

Some of the main subjects being discussed in the forum include:

• Planning and Strategy:  How have you managed to make innovation a strategic priority? Who are the key stakeholders, and how have you engaged them? What pitfalls and obstacles arise when building a broad innovation strategy for your organization?
• Ideation and Process: Is your current process generating the kinds of ideas you need? How are you measuring your idea generation process?
• Reporting and Metrics: Does your organization have an agreed upon set of innovation metrics? How do leaders know if they're successfully driving innovation? How did you scale your innovation metrics? 
• People and Organization: How do you give people the time, space, and permission to be creative? What behaviors do you encourage? What matters more, individual inspiration or collective discussion and refinement? 

The list of speakers for this conference includes:  Keynote by Expert Innovator Deb Mills-Scofield, Kim Kitchings – Cotton Inc., Matt Gann – Medco, Jeff Pierce – Pitney Bowes, Mark Neff –CSC and Mick Simonelli –USAA.

I look forward to participate in this conference and will be live blogging the content of the conference presentations as well as the results of the workshops and online forums on Imaginatik’s blog  as well as on Twitter using hashtag #ILF2012. 

 

Slides from my ProductCamp Austin presentation on the benefits of Open Innovation in product development

Open Innovation is now a very fashionable term and many companies are rushing to implement an open innovation process without fully understanding its value nor how it fits within their existing product development process.

In this Chapter of the “Beyond Stage Gate” series we discussed the different definitions of Open Innovation, where does it fit in the development cycle, software tools available and a case study. We will show how Smarty Ears, a developer of iPad apps for Speech Therapy and Communication, has used open innovation to greatly increase the number of ideas to market, as well as accelerate the product development cycle.

http://slidesha.re/yOq4cA

Which New Apps Will Have The Biggest "Buzz" at SXSW?

Robert Scoble is creating buzz for "People Discovery Services" Glancee and Highlight, although similar products Sonar and TappedIn should also get some traction by virtue of being highlighted by the startup showcasing at the Tech Cocktail event

Innovation Leaders Forum and Conference 2012

If you're an Innovation Leader, Innovation Leaders Forum and Conference 2012 is a don't-miss event. Imaginatik and the Fidelity Center for Applied Technology are joining forces for a full day of innovation topics, speakers and networking activities

The conference will take place on Thursday, March 8, 245 Summer Street, Boston, MA

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