Seattle Innovation Symposium Overview
The inaugural Seattle Innovation Symposium was held at the University of Washington on September 12-14, 2005. Approximately 100 attendees, consisting of university professors (from Computer Science, Information and Business Schools), their PhD students, and company innovators, came together to work in 25 teams sifting through promising innovations, and business scenarios that have potential to result in new billion dollar market segments. Ten innovation/technologies were identified as the most promising, along with ideas about possible business scenarios for creating the organizations required to implement the innovations. Work continues in various forms on further developing and defining the innovations and business scenarios.
The 2006 Seattle Innovation Symposium is being built on the foundation of the 2005 Symposium in a number of ways. First, the 2006 Symposium will re-invite the multi-disciplined core innovation research network group that came together in the 2005 symposium. This network of 100 participants was extremely productive in seeding discussions about innovations, emerging technologies, and creative business scenarios.
Second, the 2006 symposium will also use the participative team process methodology, which starts with small team discussions, building up successively to larger teams, and finally focusing discussion at the plenary level. This methodology proved productive, and very powerful in distilling a lot of good ideas into a few very promising ideas.
Third, the 2006 symposium will continue to bring seasoned and emerging multi-disciplined researchers together with practicing company innovators to work on the issues of “sustainable innovation.”
Our 2006 Seattle Innovation Symposium is designed to now focus our research resources on creating the artifacts necessary to build the body of knowledge on sustainable innovation. We plan to assemble the core network together (plus some additional invitees) to sift through original video-based case studies of innovation from simple to very complex processes. Newly developed video case studies will range from studies of “expert innovator” artists to a lean manufacturing plant producing integrated components for the aerospace industry to an extremely complex project of building the Boeing 787. This range of simple to complex innovation environments is illustrated in the following continuum.
Professor Rob Austin and his research team have developed an interview methodology to videotape and document in a video case study an “expert innovator” artist creating art artifacts. The artist is video taped actually creating an artifact while being interviewed by a research assistant.
Project Summary
Symposium Title: 2006 Seattle Innovation Symposium/Research Series
Symposium Date: September 11, 12, and 13, 2006
Symposium Location: University of Washington
Target Audience: Leading IT university researchers, IT executives and professionals, managers, and selected dissertation-stage PhD students
Targeted Symposium Series Sponsors: National Science Foundation, Universities, Private Companies
Symposium Objectives: The 2006 UW Seattle Innovation Symposium is the second in a series launched in 2005, supported by an NSF grant, private sponsors, and UW faculty chair endowment funds, with the objectives of (1) building and maintaining a vibrant network of researchers focused on advancing the body of knowledge on “sustainable innovation,” and (2) creating artifacts such as case studies and published papers to broadly share research on sustainable innovation with other researchers and company innovators.
The 2006 symposium will enable the network of professors, PhD students, and company innovators to assemble at the University of Washington and participate in the study of original video case studies ranging from the simple processes of artists creating creative artifacts to the complex processes of work teams innovating to improve productivity in a high tech lean manufacturing plant.
The 2006 Symposium initiative will build on the accomplishments of the 2005 Symposium initiative by continuing to involve the network of innovators who participated in the 2005 symposium. Also, we will again employ the proven small team methodology, rolling up to larger teams, and finally, into a plenary group of 50. Deliverables will include both written and video-based case studies along with commentaries from the symposium process.
Statement of the Intellectual Merit: The UW Seattle Innovation Symposium continues to build a critical mass of leading researchers (multi-disciplined, academics, PhD students studying innovation, and company innovators/entrepreneurs) to: (1) share intellectual assets and experiences in identifying the innovations and innovation practices that have potential to create new products and services, and (2) explore organizational structures and practices on how promising innovations can be more quickly exploited and integrated to create high levels of “sustainable innovation” in economic activities.
Statement of the broader impacts: The broader impact of the symposium will be to create a multi-disciplined network of academic and company innovators that can continue to work collaboratively on the individual research projects required to extend the knowledge base on innovation to shorten the time that it takes for new innovations to make a positive impact on the economy.
Symposium Dates and Location
The 2006 Seattle Innovation Symposium Series will commence with a reception at 4pm on the evening of Monday, 11 September 2006,
and run through Tuesday, 12 September and will conclude on Wednesday, 13 September 2006 at 4:30pm.
Symposium check-in and registration is from 4:00 to 7:00 on Monday, 11 September, 2006.
The symposium will be held on the University of Washington campus. This location was selected because
the symposium is developed and offered in collaboration with various departments on campus such as the Business School, Information School, Computer Science, Engineering, and Law School. There are various hotels nearby campus where the participants can take a short walk to attend the symposium.
Conference Objectives
The objectives of the Second Seattle Innovation Symposium Series are:
- To bring together multi-disciplinary academics (creators) and business professionals (stewards) to explore how new technologies, capabilities, and value emerge in business and the global economy; and,
- To research and develop a process to accelerate the technology innovation process so that technology advances begin to deliver economic benefit sooner.
Symposium Chair
Professor Michael Eisenberg, Dean Emeritus, Information School, University of Washington
Program Co-chairs
Professor Rob Austin, Harvard Business School
Ed Lazowska, Bill and Melinda Gates Professor of Computer Science, University of Washington
Richard Nolan, Philip M. Condit, Boeing Company Professor of Business Administration, University of Washington, and The William Barclay Harding Professor Emeritus, Harvard Business School
Program Pedagogy Design Co-chairs
Professor Mark Cotteller, Marquette University
Professor David Croson, Southern Methodist University
Dr. George Westerman, CISR Research Group, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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