Each year, HYPE organizes a series of forums dedicated to our client community. In addition to our own events, it's also important for us to take part in other major events that bring together professionals from the innovation management field. These events are essential to continue learning and understanding the needs of tomorrow's innovation managers, as well as share our experience.
Below, we're going to recap our last two events of 2018 and share a few 2019 innovation management events that we're excited about.
In 2018, we took part in four conferences:
■ FEI, Front End Innovation, on April 23- 26, in Boston, USA
■ The Leadership Board Partner Identification event on October 10, in London, UK
■ IMPACT with Innovation Leader on October 16-18, in Boston, USA
■ The Innovation Roundtable Summit on November 6-8 in Copenhagen, Denmark
We will now focus on the two last ones we attended.
Impact, organized by Innovation Leader, an independent media and events company focused on helping change-makers in large organizations deliver real impact, brought together over 350 people from more than a 100 companies, for two days of presentations, keynotes, and workshops. In total the event offered over 65 sessions.
The conference was clearly a great success with an audience very satisfied by the different presentations and breakout sessions. Innovation experts from world leading companies such as Google X, Facebook, Walmart, or Amazon Business shared their experience and best practices with the audience. As they say "The event is infused with peer-to-peer learning, skill-building, and interactive activities, our off-the-record sessions are for attendees' ears only. No slides, no panels, just real conversations"
The goal of the event is to help the attendees create impact through innovation initiatives and it is one of these few events that truly focus on corporate innovators without crowding the place with consultants, vendors and delivering more sales than valuable pitches. This is why we were thrilled to participate in an event where the partners were carefully selected and not too many. And, to guarantee an outstanding experience for both attendees and partners, Innovation Leader dedicated one morning to the sponsors and partners to ensure vendors had a chance to meet with the participants properly. The agenda also allowed us to attend the main stage presentations and participate in the breakout sessions, which is not common in these types of events. It was a great experience.
This conference comforted us in building a new strategy for events by delivering a different experience that allowed the attendees to learn what it means to be a HYPE customer as well as also be able to enjoy the content and be truly part of the event.
HYPE participated in this conference in 2017, and because of its success, we decided to return in 2018. Every year the event gathers together around 600 participants. Many of our clients attend each year, among them in 2018 were Airbus, BASF, Bosch, Sika, Continental, Covestro, Wärtsilä, and more. This is no surprise for us and we are even delighted to meet them there as the conference is a very interactive event with lots of roundtables, labs and networking opportunities enabling the participants, but also the partners, to stay updated on the trends in the Innovation Management Field, the current and coming needs of the Innovation Managers, on what they struggling with and so on.
Moreover, the conference proposes every year different topics the presentations, workshops and roundtables focus one. This year, five topics were addressed in the agenda that we are regularly covering in our publications - blog and reports:
■ Disruptive Innovation, New Business Models & Lean Startup
■ Innovation Culture, Leadership and Agile Organization
■ Digital Transformation, AI & Blockchain
■ Startup Collaboration & Ecosystems
■ Design Thinking & Front End of Innovation
We particularly enjoyed the keynotes from the notorious Linda Hill from the Harvard Business School, Mohanbir Sawhney from the Kellogg School of Management, and Tom Kelley, Partner at IDEO.
Like in 2017, we had the opportunity to also speak on stage. Led by HYPE CEO Enno Scholz, the presentation highlighted what the future of innovation management will look like. Enno shared HYPE's vision in the context of building a complete ecosystem to run successful innovation programs that not only focus on idea campaigns, but also integrate trends, customer insights, startup relationship management, open innovation, and so on. This vision definitely echoes with the innovation managers' expectations and needs for tomorrow.
Besides, the attendees being knowledgeable innovation management professionals with high interest for this industry and its trends, this event is a great opportunity for us to have inspiring conversations with them enabling us to keep on building an offer matching their expectations and going even beyond.
This year, we're excited to take part in several conferences with different focuses.
DTIM Conference
We can already announce that we'll participate in the DTIM conference, Disruptive Technologies and Innovation Foresight Minds, in Berlin, Germany, from February 24 to 26. This time, we will have a speaking slot with one of our clients, Daniel Käsmayr from BASF. His presentation, “Thinking Beyond the Process: The Idea Management Platform Is So Much More,” will highlight how fondamental it is to not only focus on the tool you are using to run idea campaigns, but beyond the process think about the entire ecosystem you need to support your innovation program, and how this can be quite challenging for a global corporation.
As a partner, we can offer you a special discount of 25% off your ticket if you would like to join us there. Note that the entire conference will be held in German.
600MInutes Innovation and Product Development Conference
This year, in addition to sponsoring conferences like DTIM, we'll also attend new types of events that focus on organizing meetings between attendees and partners. Participants are invited because of their need to find different kinds of partners, including solution providers like us. We're excited to try out this format at the 600Minutes Innovation and Product Development conference on March 27th in Helsinki.
Also in 2019...
We've confirmed two other conferences in our 2019 calendar. First, we'll return to Copenhagen for the third time for the Innovation Roundtable Summit 2019. And second, and new to our roster in 2019, is UIDP29 in Columbus, Ohio. The UIDP organization, whose goal is to strengthen university-industry partnerships, will organize a conference September 16 to 19 co-hosted by Ohio State University and Ohio University.
Strengthening university and industry partnerships is definitely a significant topic in the innovation management field, but it's especially important for HYPE. We are already working with major universities like UC San Diego and UC Irvine, as well as companies involving universities in their innovation programs like BAE Systems and BASF in the U.S., or BAXI with Coventry University in the UK. So, we're looking forward to learning how other corporations are teaming up with universities and sharing what we've learned at the event.
Keep an eye on the HYPE Events section where we will post more details regarding all of our 2019 events. We hope to see you this year at one of these conferences!