Denise Fletcher, CIO – Recaps FEI Boston
FEI Boston – An Event Grounded in Remarkable People
There were over 500 people at FEI Boston 2017. I’ve been attending and speaking at FEI the last five years and noticed that this year’s attendees were from more diverse areas of responsibility. For those who did attend you can access the presentations on line at:
- Login to FEI Connect
- Click on the ‘Presentation’ tab
FEI Boston Highlights
In the next couple of weeks you will receive a link to the FEI Executive Summary. This will include key takeaways, summaries and highlights from the keynote sessions, as well as select track sessions. The goal of the executive summary is to ensure the insights you gathered at the event stay top of mind — and make them easy to distribute to your teams back at the office.
My personal favorite was hearing from Clayton Christensen around the job to be done. Having been in Innovation for the past 8 years, so often our tendency is to leap toward technology solutions instead of starting with the “job to be done.”
Competing with Non-Consumption
Clayton Christensen interestingly spoke on how to compete against non-consumption and what job/profession is out there, that solves for non-consumption. I like the non-consumption definition from businessdictionary.com: rivalry in which every seller tries to get what other sellers are seeking at the same time. New competition is out there and they aren’t your typical competitor. The smaller entity, in many cases a startup, is able to find and sell what you’re seeking and selling, and they can sell it cheaper. As a big fish, how do you compete with that?
“Innovation is not a crap shoot.” Who spoke those words? Yes, Clayton Christensen. Innovation must be a focal point for all businesses and it is important to focus your company around a job that needs to be done. Answer the question: What progress are our customers trying to achieve? If you can offer your customer sought-after progress, you hold the golden ticket.
Ezassi is a partner that you can look to for achieving customer progress by accelerating the innovation process in ways such as:
- Finding disruptive technologies through a unique cyber scouting technology, utilizing real-time scouting and a curated network of over one million expert solvers
- A proven methodology to successfully run unbranded/confidential challenges with great success
- Automated scoring of idea submissions
- Advanced auto profiling of solvers/community members that is fully searchable for any skillset, patent data, etc.
- Robust idea advancement workflow with unlimited stage-gate status (from the initial idea review through the PLM process)
- Powerful, insightful, interactive analytics
- Intuitive, easy-to-use user interface
- Safe idea capture with IP protection built in
Gaining insights on your market and understanding the value data analysis, can add to driving insights and intelligence with a real purpose. This is a huge opportunity that many organizations overlook. Taking this step will help R&D and Innovation teams to focus on areas that can be monetized and create new product offering.
Innovation Highlights
Below are several innovation-related articles, blogs and readings that I’ve recently come across that I’d like to share with you:
- Leadership Lessons from the Street – King Tone on Innovation
- Internal Disruption: How to Create a Culture for Innovation from AARP
- Women Are Not Robots
- Seeking Failure to Drive Success
- Emotional Innovation – Hello’s Founder Charms the Crowd
- A Gentleman and a Scholar
- Why Finish a Conference with Failure?
- You Can’t Outsource Soul
- Innovation and the Workplace