Panel Session 1: The Innovation Process: From Ideas to Commercialization

• Moderator: Sara L. Beckman
• Professors Jennifer Chatman and Richard Lyons, Chief Learning Officer, Goldman Sachs
• Jerome Engel, Executive Director, and Professor John Freeman, Research Director of the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation
• Professor Rashi Glazer

As firms strive to become leaders in innovation in an increasingly competitive environment, new ways of thinking about the innovation process are needed.  This panel presents cutting-edge research in the development and application of models of innovation.  Drawing on real-life examples from industries as diverse as banking and motion picture production, the papers discuss issues associated with: new organizational approaches for fostering innovation; the challenges between being “entrepreneurial” and “corporate”; balancing the twin requirements of being “market driven” and “market driving” and avoiding the “innovator’s dilemma”; and managing innovations that are highly dependent on the creative process.

Panel Session 2:  Discovering and Launching New Product Blockbusters

• Moderator: Rashi Glazer
• Professor David Aaker
• Senior Lecturer Sara L. Beckman
• Kay-Yut Chen, Ph.D., Principal Scientist, Hewlett-Packard Laboratories

Successful new product launches – “home runs” – are based on a number of factors that represent a variety of organizational imperatives.  The papers presented in this panel offer novel perspectives along several key dimensions that guide the behaviors of innovation leaders: a focus not just on technology but on capturing economic value from innovation; the importance of design – with respect to products and services as well as to business models and even the spaces in which work takes place; the ability to forecast and predict marketplace response to innovations; and the importance of a brand strategy as part of the overall innovation strategy.

Panel Session 3:  Breaking Tradition -- Driving Growth

• Moderator: Adam Berman
• Henry W. Chesbrough, Adjunct Professor and Executive Director, Center for Open Innovation
• Lee Fleming, Associate Professor, Harvard Business School
• Professor John Morgan
• Professor Pablo Spiller

As we move deeper into the information age, the principles and tools associated with interactivity, community, and networks are the key drivers of growth and are integral to successful innovation.  This panel highlights a number of issues influencing innovation in the knowledge economy: the need for “open innovation strategy” to take advantage of an organization’s expanded ecosystem; the emergence of “small worlds” (social networks of inventors that span across firms) in both fostering widespread creativity while representing a threat to individual firm intellectual property; and, using pricing in the online retailing environment as an example, the role of the internet in fostering innovative dynamic business strategies.

Panel Session 4:  Creating Value in a Global Marketplace

• Moderator: David Vogel
• Professor Raymond Miles
• Professor David Mowery
• Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Strategic Planning Steven Tadelis
• Professor David Teece

The emergence of “innovation” as a primary objective of organizational strategy has coincided with the simultaneous focus on globalization at the top of the corporate agenda.  This panel presents a number of provocative viewpoints surrounding the intersection of innovation and globalization: the challenges posed by product “quality” (using examples from Japanese manufacturing) as a potential obstacle to innovation; the degree to which US leadership in innovation can be sustained in the absence of the application of principles of leadership in innovation-based economic competitiveness; using the semiconductor industry as an example, the extent to which innovation in a global industry has in fact been globalized; and the general issue of when and how to outsource as part of an innovation strategy.