One of the highlights of 2010, for me, was the opportunity to attend a meeting on innovation management at the request of BrightIdea who are a leading provider of innovation management products.
Through a series of “birds of a feather” meetings (you know, they flock together) around the world, BrightIdea have promulgated thinking, information and ideas on the rapid developments taking place in the management of innovation; and, at the time of writing (January 2011), the series has not been completed yet.
My opportunity to attend came about through a brief Twitter discussion with Vincent Carbone who co-founded BrightIdea with Matt Greeley who also wrote these inspiring words:
The BOF is not a sales event. It is a decidedly peer-to-peer conversation.
Often those with the quietest voices will be saying the most interesting things. We would do well to listen. All of us here in one way or another are tinkering with some fundamental forces of nature; Individual human creativity and a society’s need and resistance to change…
In a sense we are attempting to be “hackers” of the otherwise natural phenomenon of human invention. Much like primitive man once struggled to harness forces beyond his control like: raging rivers, electricity, and flame to the benefit of all that would come after him.
It is in this spirit that we come together. In an environment where the perspectives of anyone who shares these core values are welcome.
We gather as intellectually curious observers. Guided by the framework of science and experimentation; but not to the exclusion of hunches, impressions and intuition. For much of the science in this field has yet to be written.
Our focus is not self-interest, personal or corporate agendas, but explicitly “progress in the field of innovation”. In understanding its underlying structure, patterns and idiosyncrasies.
While we will stay informed on the latest developments in academia, we approach the subject as practitioners in applying this new knowledge to real world situations.
Those words captured superbly the sentiments of the meeting that I attended, and it was a pleasure to be involved. Some highlights of, and comments on, the events are captured in Brightidea BOF 2010 Highlights, a short video by Paul Tran who coordinated these meetings so well:
What better way to share thoughts, concepts, hopes and fears than to get into the same room with other like-minded people and enough prepared content to kick things off and … well, just see what happens?
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