Dr. Koen chairs Boston conference, "The Front End of Innovation", May 22-24, 2006
Dr. Peter Koen was chairman of the Front End of Innovation (FEI) conference in Boston in May 2006 for the fourth time on a row. This year he was also awarded for that by IIR.
The FEI-conference is a three-day conference with an impressive program focusing on issues of the compelling topic “the front end of innovation”. It is the only conference worldwide that concentrates solely on the front end of innovation, despite its importance perceived by practitioners and academics.
On the pre-conference day, attendees had a choice out of four half-day workshops or two full-day symposiums. One of the symposiums was hosted by Peter Koen. He presented us the latest on his research in the Front End of Innovation (FEI). This was followed by presentations of “The Best of the Best”, companies that outperform on certain aspects of the front end of innovation following dr. Koen’s research team (i.e. they are top quartile performers compared to 180 US SBU’s). John Leikhim from Proctor & Gamble, Charles Craig from Corning, Inc and Chuck House from Intel Corporation shared their insights and experiences with us. The symposium ended with a presentation by Nancy Eickman from Honeywell & Kathy Harold-Marlowe from Marlowe & Associates about “How to use the FEI tool to set the stage for change”. Our kick-off keynote speaker on Monday evening was nobody less than Tom Kelley, General Manager of IDEO. Tom Kelley’s presentation turned out to be very fruitful for a creative first evening in Boston.
Tuesday followed with presentations of the “Michelangelo’s” of Innovation Management like Renee Mauborgne from INSEAD, Claudio Kotchka from Proctor and Gamble, Terry Jones from Travelocity and Clayton Christensen from Harvard. During lunch, Gary Erickson from the Clif Bar entertained us with his entrepreneurial story. The afternoon followed with four concurrent tracks, each with a diverse focus. The special keynote at dinner, this year by Miha Pogacnik, was enjoyable and refreshing as “usual”. Miha Pogacnik gave us his view on how to understand innovation through his music and energetic drawings and managed to get the whole room of attendees singing with him...
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Mauborgne |
Kotcha |
Jones |
Christensen |
Pogacnik |
Wednesday was “seeded” with most interesting keynotes from e.g. Burt Rutan; an inspiring person known from SpaceShipOne ( i.e. the first private manned space flight, flew in 2004) amongst other projects. Further, we had an inventor’s forum featuring the same Burt Rutan and Rodney Brooks from iRobot Corp. The next keynoter was Eric von Hippel, well-known for his lead user research, with a fascinating talk. And than, most admirable, a CTO forum with CTO’s from Motorola, Dow Corning, Inc, DuPont and Xerox, with not less than three out of four women… Michael Treacy helped us to digest our lunch on the second day while explaining “How to bring innovation to the product development process”. The afternoon offered again four concurrent tracks.
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Burt Rutan and Rodney Brooks |
Eric von Hippel |
CTO Forum |
More information can be viewed on http://www.iirusa.com/frontend/. The conference is sponsored by the Product Development and Management Association and the Institute for International Research. You can view or download the conference presentations here.
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Travel Scholarship Awards |
Conference Team |
Preconference Pipecleaner Award |
Developed with the Industrial Research Institute (IRI)
the NCD model for establishing a common language and terminology
for the Front End.
Beginning to be accepted as THE Front End model.
Front End of Innovation is defined by:
