HARNESSING INNOVATION

TOPICS INCLUDE:
• Fostering systemic creativity
• Managing technology innovation
• Lead user-developed innovations
• Machines being creative
• Incremental improvements vs. innovation
• Innovation and commercial success
• Integrating start-ups
• Patent laws and innovation
• Global entrepreneurship

CONFERENCE OVERVIEW
Innovation means different things to different people. Some find it difficult. Others, natural. Yet more often than not, innovation is truly invigorating.

By its very nature, innovation is risky and can be disruptive to organizations. While it produces by far the most wealth from both old and new resources, innovation can be undisciplined, contrarian, and iconoclastic ... sometimes nourishing itself on confusion and contradiction. It's been said that being innovative flies in the face of what many CEOs want for their companies and heads of state want for their countries. But without innovation, where would these organizations and nations be?

So if innovation is the answer, one might ask, what's the question? Is it possible to create a model for nurturing and breeding innovation? Can we instill, measure, leverage, or even institutionalize "innovation competencies" within an organization? What are the cultural, staffing, financial, and market costs of innovating in today's global context?

This meeting will look at innovation: how to have it, how to breed it, where and why it happens, and how to capitalize on its promises. We'll explore new technologies and developments that will affect how innovation can be stimulated, incubated, fostered, and made a reality as this decade progresses. We'll focus on incumbent issues resulting from the notion of making change. We'll think collaboratively about creativity, risk, investment, partnerships, and - paradoxically - the discipline adaptive organizations may need to exercise to "win" through innovation.