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Reflections on the First Front End of Innovation Europe Conference

By: Heidi Bertels

How did it go?

The European variant of the front end of innovation conference was spread over four days, with a pre-conference day, two main conference days, and a half-day academic workshop. The latter was ìan experiment within an experimentî, since such an academic workshop had not been held in the Boston version of the conference yet (which has been organized five times so far).

 

The conference was as usual chaired by dr. Peter Koen, now referred to as "the godfather" of the conference. On the pre-conference day, attendees had the choice between AM and PM workshops and a ìspecial interest forumî. The special interest forum focused on ìHow Voice of the Customer Contributes to the Front End of Innovationî; and offered international insights from companies like LEGO, Verhaert Group, Coloplast, Ethicon, Barilla, Sagentia, Dow Corning, and IDEO. The first main conference day contained key notes from Peter Koen (Professor Stevens Institute of Technology and Director Consortium for Corporate Entrepreneurship), Isabel Aguilera (CEO Google Spain & Portugal), Emmo Meijer (Senior Vice-President Unilever Foods), and a panel on open innovation. In the afternoon, there were four concurrent tracks, respectively on ìbuilding and managing an innovative rich cultureî, ìglobalizationî, ìtools and techniquesî, and ìthought leaders Iî. The second main conference day started of with a key-note from Eric von Hippel (Professor Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of ìdemocratizing innovationî). Kell Ryan from Ryanair (co-founder) subsequently spoke about revolutionary innovation at Ryanair. Further, there was an executive leadership innovation panel and a presentation by prof. dr. Michael Droescher from Degussa (Senior Vice President Corporate Innovation Management) in the plenary session. In the afternoon, concurrent tracks on ìservice innovationî, ìmarket trends and analysisî, ìovercoming risk and uncertaintyî, and ìthought leaders IIî were on the menu.

 

In the academic workshop on Thursday before noon, there was a true mix of academics and practitioners. The academic workshop is born out of an attempt to create more dialogue between the two interdependent groups and to tune academic research according to the needs of innovation managers in the ìreal worldî. There were presentations from authorities in the academic world like Eric von Hippel (MIT), John Bessant (Advanced Institute of Management Research), Joachim Henkel (Technische Universit‰t M¸nchen), and Wim Vanhaverbeke (Eindhoven University of Technology & Hasselt University) on their current research. We hope to iterate our academic workshop experiment at the 2008 January front end of innovation conference in another European country. Overall, the conference was perceived as a success and the IIR, PDMA, Peter Koen, and the advisory board will recombine their efforts to make the conference even better in 2008. Pictures are now available here.

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