In October 2012, the Garwood Center for Corporate Innovation hosted the bi-annual Berkeley Innovation Forum at the Berkeley Skydeck located near the university. This year’s fall meeting was a two-day event focused on discussing open innovation trends and challenges within company business models, the economy, and global affairs.
At our pre-conference event, dinner included table topics on open innovation and an introductory talk given by Mr. Duncan Logan, CEO of RocketSpace, a technology community that provides real estate for tech startups. The agenda for the first day of the conference started with Special Speaker, Professor David Teece, Faculty Director of the Institute for Business Innovation, Haas School of Business, who discussed IP Strategy and Open Innovation. Afterwards, a new member panel discussion was held on the topic of Trends and Challenges in Open Innovation which included representatives from FedEx, Mattel, Applied Materials, Huawei, Lockheed Martin, Ajinomoto, Goodyear, Royal Caribbean, Nestle and Lancaster University. Next, Emil Nyberg of Ericsson and Deborah Stokes of Huawei shared their ideas and applications of open innovation within their respective companies. Another panel discussion was held on the topic of global innovation challenges: China vs. United States with speakers Vivek Wadhwa, VP of Academics & Innovation at Singularity University, Ann Lee, Professor of Economics & Global Affairs, New York University and author of “What the U.S. Can Learn From China” with BIF members Intel, DuPont, Wipro, Goodyear, Lockheed Martin & Hitachi. Lastly, we had a special presentation where seven groups from an UC Berkeley undergraduate course of Open Innovation and Business Models taught by Professor Solomon Darwin, Associate Director of the Program in Open Innovation, shared their ideas to innovate current BIF members’ companies to solve real world problems.
The following day, the Berkeley Innovation Forum continued with a presentation on Global Trends in Open Innovation and Business models by Professor Henry Chesbrough, Faculty Director of the Garwood Center for Corporate Innovation. Afterwards, breakout sessions were held which included discussions on Exploring Opportunities in the Emerging Data Economy by Dr. Brandon Barnett, Director of Business Innovation of Intel; Approaches to Managing Innovation Challenges in your Ecosystem by Sohyeong Kim, PhD Candidate of UC Berkeley; IP Issues in OI by Professor Henry Chesbrough; and Overcoming OI Organization and Implementation Barriers Within Your Company by Professor Solomon Darwin. The last presentation to the forum was by Sharon Wong and Deepu Rathi on how their company explored new business models and technology trends to innovate Cisco Systems.