GUEST POST from Julie Anixter

As the Chair of the Back End of Innovation Conference I have the distinct pleasure of being able to ask the incredible line up of speakers some questions, for you, and for me, and get to what’s most interesting. We’ll be sharing your questions with the speakers, and and do live blogging while we’re there to cover their highlights.  We’re getting the ball rolling with someone we’re very excited to talk to: Maria Thompson, Innovation Instigator, Intellectual Asset Management, Motorola Solutions, and self proclaimed innovation mentor, who will be talking about “directed innovation” in her presentation,  Predictive Innovation: Directed Inventing to Ensure Generation of High Value Ideas.

In more than 15 years of planning, conducting and facilitating more than 100 inventing sessions, Thompson has found one major truth: garbage in = garbage out. The yield of novel, patentable ideas from ad hoc brainstorming sessions is predictably low. The Directed Innovation methodology includes preparation and pre-work in the planning phase that focuses the ideation phase participants on the most important and fruitful problem areas to generate novel ideas. Measurements are pre-defined and used throughout the process to assess the value of problems, as well as the ideas generated.

Here are my top questions for Maria — please send us yours by posting a comment. We’ll do our best to get the answers posted here after the conference and in our BEI Conference Recap.

1.  What does an innovation instigator at Motorola Solutions do?

2.  How is Directed Innovation (a new term to me!) different than iterative prototyping?

3.  There has been a lot of press of late about the importance of patents to a corporation’s overall value.  How do companies develop an effective IPR strategy?

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