BONUS! All conference participants will receive a complimentary copy of Keynote James Andrew’s Highly Acclaimed Book – Payback: Reaping the Rewards of Innovation

Measuring innovation is clearly one of the most important--and frustrating--parts of managing this critical activity. Without sound measurements all key aspects of innovation--performance, returns, and, ultimately support--suffer. But in a recent global survey of 377 senior executives, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) found that only 37% of respondents were satisfied with their company's measurement practices. Jim Andrew, the global head of BCG's Innovation Practice, will share insights drawn from his recent book Payback: Reaping the Rewards of Innovation (named by BusinessWeek as one of the top 10 innovation and design books of the year), BCG's annual global survey, and his 20 years of consulting to some of the worlds most innovative companies.

He will address issues that even the best companies find challenging, including the following:

• The three things that always have to be measured

• How a simple picture can change the entire discussion around innovation--and significantly improve performance

• How to measure the four indirect benefits of innovation

• Risk--how to deal with the thing that you can't live without . . . and many management teams don't want to live with

Participants will learn how leading companies use effective measurement systems to dramatically increase their Innovation ROI and improve their competitive position--and what specific steps they as leaders can do to help their companies do the same.

Jim Andrew is a Senior Partner and Director of BCG, based in the Chicago office. Prior to this, he founded and ran BCG’s offices in both Mumbai (Bombay) India and Singapore. He joined the firm in 1986.

Jim is the global leader of BCG’s Innovation Practice. He regularly works closely the executive teams of some of the world’s most innovative companies and leads BCG’s research in this area, including BCG’s annual survey with BusinessWeek on the world’s most innovative companies. His expertise covers all areas of innovation, including developing an innovative culture and set of capabilities, leadership requirements, customer/consumer insight, R&D, new product development, product launch, life-cycle management, and innovation measurement.

Mr. Andrew is the lead author of the book Payback: Reaping the Rewards of Innovation (published by Harvard Business School Press), recently named as one of BusinessWeek’s Top 10 Innovation books for the year. He has appeared on CNBC’s SquawkBox and CBS MarketWatch. He and his work have also been featured in Harvard Business Review, the Economist, the Financial Times, BusinessWeek and many other publications
 

Although innovation is currently moving from a black art across a plethora of approaches to a management science that is more deliberate and systematic in nature, we are still several years away from being able to establish numerical correlations between approaches and resultant outcomes; however, there are some emergent indicators of tools and techniques that are likely to prove out in the long run. At the same time, measures and metrics that directly address R&D productivity and innovation are evolving to keep pace. For example, measures of profit are rapidly gaining popularity and approaching the frequency of usage of more traditional measures of revenue. Measures of portfolios and intellectual property are also on the rise.

Increasing productivity is everyone’s responsibility. There are strategic actions that can be taken at the top of the company and tactical actions that can enhance concept development, innovation, advanced development, and product development processes. These operational actions are primarily directed at projects and/or functions. While little is certain at this time, companies that have more tolerance for risk will find themselves ahead of risk-averse companies that wait for everything to become mathematically correlated.

While open innovation appears to be the current rage in industry, improved organic innovation is the real desire of most companies aggressively pursuing open innovation. In this presentation, Mr. Goldense will offer a number of techniques that will lead to improved organic innovation and productivity.

Topics include:

• Seven benchmarked actions that top management can take to increase innovation and productivity.

• Techniques and tools in use today that induce more innovation than other tools.

• Emerging techniques and tools being developed and/or fleshed-out to increase innovation.

• Known productivity and innovation metrics whose industry penetration is on the rise.

• Aggregate performance information that supports the case for investment in innovation-enablers.

Bradford L. Goldense is President of Goldense Group, Inc. [GGI], a nineteen-year old consulting and education firm concentrating in advanced business and technology management practices for line management functions. Mr. Goldense has consulted to over 150 of the Fortune 1000 and has worked on productivity improvement and automation projects in over 400 manufacturing locations. Abbott Laboratories, Bayer, S.C. Johnson, Ford, General Motors, John Deere, Philips, United Technologies, Carrier, Molex, Monsanto, Bose, and Shure are among GGI's clients. Prior to founding GGI in 1986, Mr. Goldense held positions at Computer Sciences Corporation's Index Group, Price Waterhouse, Lester B. Knight & Associates, and Texas Instruments.

Many scientists and leaders believe we live in the greatest time of change in the history of our species. In practical terms, this means that if you are not routinely innovating you are probably falling behind. So it is essential to see this whole picture, with a special focus on how effective innovation can help drive organic growth, achieve strong ROI, and build bold brands.

Larry Keeley will explain the emerging discipline of innovation that is reinventing this field. In particular, this session will focus on the extensive research that proves how frequently innovation fails to deliver satisfactory ROI. Keeley will then go on to explain how to identify the many surprising, counter-intuitive myths and lore that undermine innovation efforts—and specifically how to adopt methods and logic that can shift innovation from a vague hope to a deep competence.

Participants can expect to learn more about the frontiers of innovation measurement and metrics—including the debut of some entirely new innovation diagnostic techniques.

Larry Keeley is President of Chicago-based Doblin Inc., a leading consulting firm that focuses on effective innovation, now part of Monitor Group. He is on the faculty of IIT’s Institute of Design plus Kellogg Graduate School of Management, and lectures regularly at University of Chicago, in Spain, and the Advanced Management Program in Scotland, Edinburgh. Keeley has been named one of the seven leading “gurus” of innovation by BusinessWeek Magazine, where they labeled him “Mr. Metrics”.

BONUS! All conference participants will receive a complimentary copy of Keynote Dean Spitzer’s most recent work – Transforming Performance Measurement

What comes to mind first when you hear the words "metrics" and "measurements"? If you're like most people, you probably think: data collection . . . calculations . . . analysis of numbers . . . tables of statistics . . . scorecards . . . benchmarking.
But measurement, according to Dr. Spitzer, senior researcher, consultant, and performance-measurement innovator with IBM Corporation, is "not so much about numbers as it is about perception, understanding, and insight."

In this keynote session, Dr. Spitzer points out how measuring the wrong things in the wrong ways can produce dysfunctional behavior and undermine innovation. In fact, he believes that the measurement of innovation is among the least innovative in most organizations! However, measuring in the right ways can transform performance. In fact, Dr. Spitzer will explain how innovation measurement can become an integral part of successful innovation in your organization – rather than a dysfunctional “metrics exercise.”

Key Takeaways:

• Why performance measurement is so powerful (for good or for bad)

• How performance measurement all too often undermines your innovation strategy and prevents collaboration

• How you can make people in your organization experience performance measurement as a positive (rather than a threatening) force

• How you can use emergent and transformational measures to drive much higher levels of innovation performance

• Why collecting and analyzing data are the least important aspects of performance measurement and what is most important

• Steps you can take to transform measurement of innovation in your organization

Dr. Dean Spitzer is a senior researcher and consultant with IBM Corporation. He is an IBM thought leader in the area of performance management and measurement and has over 30 years experience in helping individuals and organizations achieve superior performance. He is involved in groundbreaking research at IBM on business measurement models and leads a research program on “the socialization of measurement” and on measuring innovation.

Prior to joining IBM, Dr. Spitzer led his own consulting firm. In that capacity, Dr. Spitzer directed over 100 successful training and performance improvement projects. Dr. Spitzer is the author of 7 books and over 150 articles on various areas of human performance improvement, organizational development, performance management, and motivation. His latest book is Transforming Performance Measurement: Rethinking the Way We Measure and Drive Organizational Success.

Many product developers assume that conformance to schedule, budget, and requirements are the unquestionable keys to product development success. As a result, they develop elaborate metric systems to ensure conformance to their carefully crafted plans. What if they are wrong?

What if the real key to success lies not in conforming to plan, but in how we react to emerging obstacles and opportunities? This radically different view raises profound questions about what we should really measure to achieve success. In this keynote Don will challenge you with a different view of product development.

He will discuss:

• How improving flow simultaneously improves efficiency, cycle time, and quality

• Why seeking conformance and efficiency can actually backfire to undermine flow

• How to measure the overall flow in product development

• How to measure the underlying causal factors that enable flow

Don Reinertsen is President of Reinertsen & Associates, specializing in the management of the product development process. Before forming his own firm, he consulted at McKinsey & Co., an international management consulting firm, and was Senior Vice President of operations at Zimmerman Holdings, a private diversified manufacturing company. His contributions in the field of product development have been recognized internationally. He is particularly noted for bringing fresh perspectives and quantitative rigor to development process management.

In 1983, while a consultant at McKinsey & Co., he wrote a landmark article in Electronic Business magazine that first quantified the value of development speed. This article has been cited in the frequently quoted McKinsey study that indicated “6 months delay can be worth 33 percent of lifecycle profits.” He coined the term “Fuzzy Front End” in 1983 and began applying world class manufacturing techniques in product development in 1985. His latest book, Managing the Design Factory, is recognized as a powerful and thoughtful application of manufacturing thinking to product development. Don is also co-author of, Developing Products in Half the Time. Mr. Reinertsen holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University and an M.B.A. with distinction from Harvard Business School.