Innovation is taking on increased importance for corporations who aim to prosper under the current difficult global economic conditions. Many companies are finding today that the old ways and old products no longer serve them sufficiently. To deliver new value has become ever more important and at the same time, traditional markets often are contracting, causing concerns about how to retain existing market share.

 The Boston Corporate Innovation Forum aims to highlight aspects of Innovation that corporations should find particularly useful and instructive for considering a new fresh approach to Innovation. This year’s forum probes deeper in some of the topics that were discussed last year.

 In this context, the Swiss American Chamber of Commerce, the Swedish American Chamber of Commerce and swissnex Boston-Consulate of Switzerland invite you to our one-day interactive forum, designed for professionals responsible for innovation in a corporate environment. The event will combine discussions with experts in the various fields of Innovation and tailor-made workshops with consultants will be offered in the afternoon.

 The morning part of the seminar will bring together a unique set of keynote speakers from both Academia and Industry around four different topics:

The afternoon will be dedicated to two workshops on current topics in innovation: social media / collaborating with startups / international innovation.

8.00am: Industrial Design driving Innovation: Speakers:

Sebastian Fixson, Assistant Professor of Technology and Operations Management, Babson College

Harry West, CEO, Continuum

9.00am: Organizing for Innovation (Teams, Culture and Process): Speakers:

Jay Rao, Professor of Technology and Innovation, Babson College

Dan Keldsen, Principal, InformationArchitected

10.30am: Materials Technologies Enabling Innovations: Speakers:

Francesco Stellacci, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, MIT

Per Baverstam, President, Baverstam Associates

11.30am: Disruptive Technologies Driving Innovations: Speakers:

Howard Anderson, William Porter Distinguished Lecturer, Behavioral Policy Science, MIT Sloan School of Management

Robyn Bolton, Manager, Innosight

12.30pm: Lunch break and Networking

(You will be asked to select one of the three following option during the registration process)

1)      Learning from the small and fast ones. How can large companies adopt startup product development cycles?

Moderator: Serge Roux, Principal Industrial Designer, Cambridge Consultant Inc.

Participants will be divided into small groups and asked to brainstorm ideas about how a start-up-company Innovation model can inspire larger corporation. At the end of the exercise, the goal is to reach a consensus within the group and to summarize the outcomes of the reflection on three slides that will be presented to the rest of the audience.

2)    Connecting Invention to Innovation. How to distinguish Technology development from a pure research development or product development approach.

Moderator: Gerhard Pawelka, co-founder and CEO, Cooper Perkins, Inc.

Participants will be asked to play roles representing technical research, user research, product development, and business development in order to demonstrate at the end the specific function of technology development within a company

3)    Sharing the Principles of Design Thinking

Moderator:  An executive from Continuum, still to be defined

The workshop will engage attendees by sharing tools and working styles to help facilitate the principles of Design Thinking, and provide an opportunity to put them to use in an interactive and collaborative environment.  It will include a close look at how Continuum works using direct examples from the work we have done with P&G to create a new category.