Innovation: When Change is the Only Constant

Please make sure you watch it all the way until the end.

Pattie Maes & Pranav Mistry talk about Unveiling the "Sixth Sense," game-changing wearable tech.

Vrouwen aan de Macht - Stef Bos
Ik heb vannacht een droom gehad
Ik heb weer iets geleerd
Ik zag de wereld op z'n kop
En alles omgekeerd
De avond was de ochtend
Ik werd wakker in de nacht
En alle dingen
dansten voor m'n ogen
En ik zag
De wissel van de wacht
Vrouwen aan de macht
De wissel van de wacht
Vrouwen aan de macht
De regering was gevallen
Voor de wet van vrouwelijk schoon
De generaal bracht alleen nog maar
De kinderen naar school
Geen vrouw achter de schermen meer
Geen man als marionet
De koningin had met gevoel
De koning mat gezet
Het was mooier dan ik dacht
Wat ik zag vanacht
De wissel van de wacht
Vrouwen aan de macht
Nee vrouwen zijn geen engelen
Dat hoor je niet van mij
Maar alles moet veranderen
En het wordt langzaam tijd...
Voor een...
Wissel van de macht
Vrouwen aan de macht
Dat is wat ik zag
In een droom vanacht
Ik zag de vrouwen aan de macht
En wat een mooie toekomst
Vrouwen aan de macht
Ze nemen ons uit eten
En ze betalen het gelag
Wij luisteren en lachen
Zij doen voor ons hun best
En ze maken carrière
En ze sterven van de stress
Het is mooier dan ik dacht
Wat ik zag vannacht
De wissel van de wacht
Vrouwen aan de macht

I am sure you have heard enough of it… Economical crisis, recession, depression. Call it what you want – everyone knows what you mean. But how is your company going to manage this? How can you help ensure that your company doesn’t end up in the statistics?

Many companies and countries are looking at innovation as one of the key determinants for survival today. And where can you learn more about innovation than at the front end of innovation conference?

The keynote speakers for this year’s conference include nobody less than Jim Collins, Mike Santori, John Kao, Peter Erickson, Jody Turner, Verena C. Kloos, President, BMW Group DesignworksUSA, and Max von Zedtwitz.

Ready to change? Much more information can be found on IIR's website.

I loved 2009’s European Front End of Innovation conference in Monaco organized by PDMA & IIR. I had big expectations of Monaco; but as a place I thought it was rather disappointing. My expectations of the conference, on the contrary, were beyond fulfilled. Moreover, hypothesizing that you can also tell the quality of presentations based upon the number of people checking their e-mails on their Blackberry's and iPhones, I would say overall it was a great conference.The keynote speakers were of excellent quality and represented balanced variety.

Jeremy Rifkin, president of the foundation on economic trends and the greenhouse crisis, was our first keynote speaker. He first put me down a little when he talked to us about the world’s ecological situation. Happily that was undone from the moment he shifted gears and spoke about how we can make a difference through innovation and act towards making the world a better and healthier place to live. Dr. Peter Koen, Associate Professor at Stevens Institute of Technology, talked about the challenges incumbent firms face when they explore new business models and the dilemmas they need to tackle when they simultaneously pursue established and new businesses. Leo Kärkkäinen, Research Fellow and Chief Visionary Systems Research at Nokia, brought the Nokia Vision on the table. On the second day, Leo Roodhart, Head of the Strategic Innovation Unit of Group GameChanger at Shell International, linked long term scenarios to short term actions. Jan Kriekels, Director M&R&D, Art Director, and Owner of Jaga moved everyone of us with his view on innovation and our roles therein. Finally, we heard Wolfgang Müller-Pietralla, Head of Future Research and Trend Transfer at Volkswagen, talk about the research of trends and its implementation.

Even during the afternoon tracks -and I admittedly do have problems sometimes to stay concentrated during “siesta time”- I found the presentations so interesting that they energized me sufficiently to stay focused. The afternoon tracks centered around co-creation/user focused innovation, nurturing breakthroughs, from eco-conception to eco-innovation towards a sustainable future, the environment, service experience and design, and business model innovation. This year I also particularly liked the networking; maybe because there was an extra-ordinary amount of Flemish people present (I plead guilty to have a weak heart for my country(wo)men). The hotel accommodations were comfortable and the food provided at the conference was good. Being a Belgian expat in the US – I swear it is important :-).

On November 2nd, 2008, Heidi ran the NYC Marathon in the NF Endurance Team for the Chidren's Tumor Foundation.

Watch the 2008 NYC Marathon movie my friends made... (I'm in it... just wait long enough...)



By clicking HERE you can contribute to the Children's Tumor Foundation.

Dear friends,

On November 2nd, I will be running the NYC marathon in the NF Endurance Team. I look forward to this thrilling experience, but I'm even more happy to being able to contribute to a good cause.

The NF Endurance Team is running for charity i.e. we are raising money for The Children's Tumor Foundation. If you have some money on the side, please help us make others' dreams come true.

You can watch a video about The Children's Tumor Foundation and contribute on:
http://www.active.com/donate/nfnewyork2008/heidibertels

Warm regards,
Heidi

The Third Annual Front End of Innovation Europe conference is scheduled for 26-28 January, 2009 at the Fairmont Hotel, Monte Carlo. The theme for this year’s conference is “Exploring a New Ecosystem for Growth.”



Our keynote speakers include Jeremy Rifkin (Foundation on Economic Trends & Greenhouse Crisis Foundation), Peter Koen (Stevens Institute of Technology), Jan Kriekels (Uchronia), Doug MacMillan (Nokia), Leo Roodhart (Shell International), and Efstratia Zafeiriou (Audi)…

Please go take a look at the IIR website to learn more...

As a 2005 doctoral travel scholarship recipient myself, I encourage doctoral students all over the world to apply for the front end of innovation doctoral travel scholarship. For me, the 2005 doctoral travel scholarship changed my life.

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More great stuff on IBM's website.

Snow crackling
Krakende sneew
A Christmas carol travels
Een kerstliedje reist
Through my mind
Door mijn hoofd
Playfully
Spelenderwijs
And I smile, for all I find
En ik glimlach, want ik besluit
Life is a miracle
Het leven is een wonder

Heidi

A glance at the program of the second European Front End of Innovation Conference, which will be held in Vienna, January 28-31, 2008... and all I can feel is excitement and pride. IIR and the conference team have worked hard over the summer to recruit top-notch speakers to compose the conference that today's innovation community wants. Our list of academic and practitioner gurus contains names like Clayton Christensen (Harvard Business School), Simon Woodroffe (YO!), Dieter Geppert (LG Technology Center Europe), Kjell Ac Bergström (General Motors Powertrain), and David Macnair (Cadbury Schweppes). One can also find an infinite source of valuable speakers in the concurrent tracks focused on such topics as breakthrough innovation, design thinking, green innovation, and many, many others. IIR has put a CONFERENCE PREVIEW ONLINE. I can hardly wait...

This movie is definitely worth 4 minutes and 42 seconds of your time...

Ying & Me
Ying Li, from the University of Hasselt, was one of the recipients of the 2007 doctoral travel scholarship.

For more pictures (including pictures of the false fire alarm and Daniel Shoenhair's (PING, INC.) little strip act), link here to Peter Koen's website.

Also, don't forget to check out Chas Martin's writings on the conference.

Nobody talks about the ‘fuzzy’ front end anymore.

This year, the US-based pdma/IIR Front End of Innovation Conference celebrated its fifth birthday. The three conference constants for the last five years have been its location in Boston, its chairman Peter Koen (Stevens Institute of Technology & Consortium for Corporate Entrepreneurship), and its high quality program.

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A nice video about innovation found on youtube:

March 8th

2007?

Listen here to the story of Abay presented by Phil Borges on the website of Care (http://www.care.org/).

Let all the Abay's under us be encouraged to continue their work and to make a difference...

A woman

My new column (in Dutch) can be read online at the website of "Vlamingen in de Wereld".

The new symposium from the Consortium for Corporate Entrepreneurship focuses on the discovery and commercialization of breakthroughs. The symposium has its usual format which allows companies to capitalize on the small scale of the event and the intimate interaction with world-renowned researchers. The whole symposium evolves around the tailored needs of the companies and the key challenges they face with regard to the symposium topic. On the first day, member companies of the Consortium position their breakthrough innovation objectives; learn best practices and ideas from each other and brainstorm about what the key issues to be addressed on the second day are. On the second day, Vijay Govindarajan from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and Mike Tushman from Harvard Business School will present their latest research and insight on discovering and commercializing breakthroughs to the companies. The afternoon involves “cross company theme breakouts” and a session to consolidate “company take aways” to maximize learning. This year, attending companies are Becton Dickinson, Ethicon, ExxonMobil, Johnson & Johnson Consumer, Milllipore, and Proctor and Gamble. The Consortium looks forward to a new, enriching conference with its consortium members and other companies. For more information about the Consortium for Corporate Entrepreneurship, please go to their website.

Pictures can now be viewed by clicking here.

How did it go?

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The new Front End of Innovation Conference to be held in Boston, May 8-11, 2007 will be chaired again by Peter Koen. Speakers like Henry Chesbrough, Vijay Govindarajan, Michael Tushman, Peter Diamandis, and Dustan McCoy represent the crème de la crème of the academic and practitioner people in the front end of innovation area. For a full overview of the conference and its speakers (conference brochure), please click here. For additional information, you can contact us or visit the the conference website.

My most recent column (in Dutch) can be found on the VIW website ...

The conference brochure for the first front end of innovation conference in Europe is available and can be downloaded here.

For the official conference website, click here.

Want to look back at the conference in Boston in 2006 or look forward to the one in 2007? Download an Evaluation of the Front End of Innovation Conference 2006 & preview 2007 here.

For the official conference website, click here.

I started writing columns for Vlamingen in de Wereld (VIW) which is Dutch for "Flemish people in the world". If you want to practice your Dutch, you can find them on the VIW website. Click on "Heidi Bertels' blik op NY" and you'll be transferred to my columns describing my experiences as foreigner in the US.

With some healthy European proud, I am happy to reveal the first secrets of the first European PDMA/IIR Front End of Innovation Conference...

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Currently we are doing large-scale research in the front end of innovation in order to increase the number of highly profitable and commercially successful products that enter the New Product Development (NPD) portion of the innovation process. We can compare your business unit’s front end against some of the top companies in the United States – such as GE, P&G, Intel, and 3M.

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Heidi Bertels
Doctoral Student - Research Assistant

RESUME



SEND E-MAIL

Stevens Institute of Technology
Wesley J. Howe School of Technology Management
Castle Point on Hudson
Hoboken, NJ 07030
Tel: +1.201.216.5560
Fax: +1.201.221.7788
@: hbertels@stevens.edu

www.viw.be/artikels/heidi_bertels.htm
www.fuzzyfrontend.be
www.frontendinnovation.com

On Monday June 12th, I presented my master thesis "WHAT IS THE INFLUENCE OF THE FRONT END OF INNOVATION,PROJECT AND COMPANY RELATED FACTORS ON NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT PERFORMANCE?" in Milan at the 13th International Product Development Conference. If you are interested in my presentation, you can download it by clicking HERE.

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.

» Read More

The proposal is no longer available online.

For whoever might be interested in the front end of innovation, you can take a look at my doctorate proposal for updated information about the literature of the front end. Notice that there is a large appendix with useful information. Some of the aspects of the presentation are left out since it was never meant to go public.
Please respect the references as well as my own ideas.

CLICK HERE for my Ph.D. proposal (24-04-05)

Feel free to contact me if you would have any questions and/or comments (hbertels@stevens.edu)

Here you can find the paper that I will present on the 13th International Product Development Conference in Milan in June 2006. This paper describes the work that has been done during my master thesis. You can find its abstract under the posting of 23/12.

CLICK HERE for the paper of my master thesis (Offline)

Referencing Guidelines
Bertels, H. & J.A. Buijs. 2006. What is the influence of the front end of innovation, project and company related factors on new product development performance? Proceedings of the 13th International Product Development Management Conference, June 12-13, Milan.

There is also a private section on this blog which describes my adventures in Hoboken as foreigner. This section is in Dutch and can only be accessed if you are provided with a username and password. For information SEND E-MAIL.

My thesis (written in Dutch) is now online on fuzzyfrontend.be!
CLICK HERE for “Unfuzzying the Fuzzy Front End - Master Thesis 2004” (Offline)

You can also consult the short version (in English) in the form of a poster:
CLICK HERE for “Poster Unfuzzying the Fuzzy Front End - Master Thesis 2004”

If you are interested in the doctoral proposal that I submitted in Belgium while still pursuing a doctorate at the Hogeschool Antwerpen in collaboration with prof. dr. Jan Buijs (TU Delft), prof. Paul Verhaert, Lic. Mia Cornelis & prof. Johan Braet (UA), you can download it here.
CLICK HERE for “Heidi's Belgian Project Proposal_15th of September 2005” (Offline)

And last but not least, my portfolio of projects during my education Industrial Design in Belgium
CLICK HERE for “Heidi's Portfolio 1999-2004”

Abstract accepted for 13th International Product Development Management Conference of EIASM (The European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management)!
CLICK HERE for the abstract of my master thesis

De eerste stapjes zijn gezet... naar de 13th international product development management conference van EIASM (The European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management) in juni 2006 in Milaan!! Mijn abstract is aanvaard.

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Voor zij die geïnteresseerd zijn, ik mocht een klein tekstje schrijven over mezelf in de rubriek "Vertrekkensklaar" van het tijdschrift van Vlamingen in de Wereld. Je kan het tijdschrift aankopen op de website van vlamingen in de wereld "www.viw.be".

KLIK HIER voor pagina 11 uit het magazine van Vlamingen in de Wereld nr 52