News

The only things that should be fuzzy are peaches & babies heads (David Hagopian, FEI Boston, May 10, 2007)

By: Heidi Bertels

Nobody talks about the 'fuzzy' front end anymore.

This year, the US-based pdma/IIR Front End of Innovation Conference celebrated its fifth birthday. The three conference constants for the last five years have been its location in Boston, its chairman Peter Koen (Stevens Institute of Technology & Consortium for Corporate Entrepreneurship), and its high quality program.

 

On May 8th and 9th, there were several workshops and pre-conference symposia available for those who were afraid that their hunger for ëinformation-on-innovationí would not be stilled with the two main conference days alone.

 

On May 10th, the first main conference day, Peter Koen advocated an evidence based approach for the front end of innovation. This was well illustrated later on by Gary Lovemanís presentation on ëHarrahís Entertainmentí. Gary Loveman shared with the attendees how Harrahís takes advantage of demographic data to make its best customers happy, even when luck is not on their side. To conclude the plenary morning session, there was a panel discussion with innovation champions Lara Lee (Harley-Davidson), Amy Radin (Citigroup), Dondeena Bradley (McNeil Nutritionals), and Sam Lucente (Hewlett-Packard) moderated by Bruce Nussbaum (BusinessWeek). Subsequently, the conference format changed from one plenary session into four concurrent tracks. The tracks focused on innovation strategy, design thinking, service innovation, and managing the discovery portfolio. At lunch time, comedian Wayne Cotter entertained the attendees with the less serious side of innovation and a great amount of creativity. Later in the afternoon, the attendees were located together again to listen to keynote presentations from David Swift, president of Whirlpool (North America) and leading academics Vijay Govindarajan (Dartmouth College) and Mike Tushman (Harvard Business School). Throughout and at the end of the day, attendees could network and talk to sponsors at the Exhibit Hall.

 

On the morning of the second main conference day, Dustan McCoy took off with a keynote presentation on sustaining ëgenuine ingenuityí at Brunswick Corporation. His presentation was followed by the second part of BusinessWeekís ëchampions of innovation forumí featuring Carol Pletcher (former Cargill), Stephanie Barry (WD-40), Marissa Mayer (Google), and Cheryl Perkins (former Kimberly-Clark Corporation), and moderated by Jessie Scanlon (BusinessWeek Online). The concurrent tracks concentrated on leadership & culture, partnering for innovation, innovation rebels, and tools, trends & advancements. Comedian Wayne Cotter joined again for lunch. The conference was closed later in the afternoon with a keynote presentation on open business models by Henry Chesbrough (University of California, Berkeley). His keynote functioned as an introduction to another interesting panel discussion. The panel talked about a leaderís view on open innovation and featured Henry Chesbrough himself, Nabil Sakkab (Proctor & Gamble), Todd Abraham (Kraft) and Nicholas Bowen (IBM) and was moderated by Stephen Socolof (New Venture Partners LLC).

 

For rich information on the conference, you can check out Chas Martin's reflections online.

 

Pictures are to follow soon. For more information on the program, please look on IIRís website.

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