Center for Innovation Strategies

Events & Resources

Past Events

• Open/Close Spring 2021 Speaker Series

  Innovating Through Change 
  Featuring Judy Mondello, VP of R&D - Consumer Foods, The J.M. Smucker Company
  Wednesday, January 20, 2021

  Change is constant and the uncertainty it creates can be destabilizing for many, particularly as the pandemic continues to impose layers of change on organizations and individuals. While we may be rounding a corner in the pandemic, the need to innovate while managing constant change will remain with us. How can we encourage leaders and teams to engage proactively with both innovation and change as a daily practice?  Join us as Judy Mondello, VP of R&D for Consumer Foods, discusses how she manages innovating through change at The J.M. Smucker Company. 

  Judy currently leads all aspects of Research & Development for the Consumer Foods Business Unit of the J.M. Smucker Company. Judy has a team of 58 scientists and engineers that deliver innovation, advanced science and technology as well as margin management for brands such as Smucker’s, Jif, and Uncrustables. Judy has over 25 years of R&D experience, working with companies such as Sara Lee, McKee Foods (Little Debbie) and Ralston Purina.

  Judy has led the creation and launch of over 100 new products over her career. Judy holds a B.S in Dietetics, an M.S. Food Science and an MBA.  Judy is married with three kids and a dog.

  Engaging Your Legal Team to Enhance Innovation
  Featuring Sarah Duda, Innovation Law Attorney, Allstate, and Lewis Dolezal, Corporate Counsel, The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company
  Thursday, February 25, 2021

  Bringing new products, services and business models to fruition involves moving beyond organizational, legal and procedural obstacles. Some innovation teams think this means sprinting ahead and asking permission later. But the most successful innovators know that involving your legal team in the innovation process early and regularly can help your organization define its risk tolerance, identify and mitigate risk, and ultimately get to yes sooner.

  Join us as we speak with innovation law experts Sarah Duda, innovation law attorney for Allstate, and Lewis Dolezal, corporate counsel for The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company, as they share tips for engaging your legal teams as critical business partners in the innovation process.

• Open/Close Fall 2020 Speaker Series

  Building Bridges to Transformation Starting with Small Teams & Quick Wins
  Featuring Oren Goldschmidt and Dan Haber, Co-Founders, Flow Innovation 
  Tuesday, September 22, 2020

  Strategic organizational change is often positioned as an episodic effort that highlights major investments in new and wide-ranging initiatives. These initiatives too often lead to underperforming investments, diffused executive attention, and lost organizational momentum. Are there more effective and efficient ways to go about it? Drawing on experiences leading innovation in enterprises, Oren Goldschmidt and Dan Haber, Co-Founders of Flow Innovation, will provide insights on how organizations can harness small innovation teams integrated within the organization to generate quick wins, take bold short steps that build the foundation for organizational transformation, and bring things to market that start the ball rolling toward a new strategic future. These small adaptive steps are more resilient than most transformation and change management efforts and can build organizational momentum even in the most challenging times. Join us to learn how small teams and quick wins can build the bridge to transformation and foster the capabilities for more continuous adaptation and growth.

  Oren Goldschmidt (PhD, University of Oxford) is an innovator and venture builder with deep experience in corporate innovation and new business creation. Oren has more than 20 years of experience as an entrepreneur and startup leader with 10 years focused on corporate innovation and venture building. He has proven success in leading the creation of new businesses and venture-backed portfolios for Fortune 500 and Global 1000 companies. He is passionate about building transformative solutions, highly effective teams, and harnessing the power of the startup model to the scale and reach of large corporations. Oren has expertise in artificial intelligence, deep learning, and data science across financial services, healthcare, and industrial sectors. Oren co-founded Flow Innovation with Dan Haber in 2018 to help mid-market companies develop strategic innovation and technology capabilities that help them thrive amid a changing external environment and competition from large enterprises and well-funded startups.

  Dan Haber (MBA, The Ohio State University) is a corporate innovator and entrepreneur with a rare blend of experiences across the innovation spectrum over more than 15 years. Dan has led groundbreaking R&D teams, early stage startups, corporate spinoffs, and corporate innovation teams reinventing the businesses of Fortune 500s. Dan has a proven track record of repeatedly cultivating highly effective teams that can rapidly innovate in the most complex environments including aviation, healthcare, insurance, and banking. Dan is passionate about building purpose-driven and dynamic teams that create innovations that transform lives, industries, and the world.

  Tips & Exercises for Unleashing Personal and Team Creativity
  Featuring Ida Abdalkhani, Founder of Ability to Engage
  Tuesday, October 13, 2020

  In this session, Ida Abdalkhani, Founder of Ability to Engage, will discuss the importance of problem framing to achieve game-changing innovation. She will also reveal exercises her team has used at Ability to Engage to drive growth for some of the world's largest companies.

  Ida Abdalkhani is the Chief Catalyzer & Founder of Ability to Engage, Inc. Ability to Engage helps brands develop marketing communications, product ideas, brand strategies (brand personality, equity, and architecture), and consumer segmentations. The A2E team also develops and facilitates innovation sessions, strategic meetings, and team effectiveness workshops. Clients include start-up companies, international government groups, and some of the world’s largest and most respected companies in brand and marketing such as Clorox, ConAgra Foods, McGraw Hill, Ogilvy, PepsiCo, Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, and Red Bull.

  In addition to running an award-winning boutique consultancy, Ida has been featured on the cover of OSU’s alumni magazine, named a “52 Young Professionals to Know” in Columbus, Ohio, a P&G “40 Under 40” awardee, OSU “Early Career Achievement” recipient, TEDx speaker, Tone Networks Expert (subscription-based service focused on improving the personal and professional lives of women), Vistage International Speaker, and a “Top Professor in Entrepreneurship” in the nation. She has taught both graduate and undergraduate courses in Creativity & Design Thinking Strategies for Innovation at the University of Michigan and The Ohio State University. Ida holds seven patents­–six with the USPTO and one with the EPO–and has been published in Prentice Hall, YOUNG MONEY® magazine, and several blogs. As a certified Laughter Yoga instructor, she also enjoys getting people to find their “inner child” through laughter.

  The Drug Development Ecosystem in Central Ohio: A Discussion with Jeffrey Patrick PharmD, Institute Director of the Drug Development Institute at The Ohio State University
  Tuesday, November 17, 2020

  ​Join us to engage in a forum for innovation and collaboration in the drug development ecosystem. The development of new drug therapies is a crucial area of innovation requiring the coalescence of skills and expertise from many different fields to propel an idea from the lab bench to the patient. Learn more about the unique partnership between the Drug Development Institute and the Center for Innovation Strategies that is bridging the gap between discoveries made in the research lab and their translation into new drug therapies for patients. Brian Wulff, PhD, Program Director at the Center for Innovation Strategies, and Jeff Patrick, PharmD, Institute Director of the Drug Development Institute will discuss their collaboration, a new experiential drug development program for graduate business students, and the drug development ecosystem in Ohio. We hope you can join us for this interactive discussion.

  Dr. Patrick is a residency-trained clinical pharmacist with nearly 20 years of pharmaceutical industry experience. Dr. Patrick has training from the University of Tennessee and the Wharton School of Business, and has senior and executive experience at pharmaceutical companies including Myogen/Gilead Sciences, Mallinckrodt, and New Haven. In his present role he is leading the pre-clinical drug development in oncology at the Drug Development Institute (DDI). The DDI is a biotech-like institute embedded in The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute. The DDI’s mission is to rapidly translate innovative early research in cancer at OSU into tomorrow’s most promising cancer treatments for patients.

• Open/Close Spring and Summer 2020 Events and Speaker Series

  Validating Ideas and Solving Customer Problems with Design Sprints 
  Featuring Rob Davlin, User Experience Design, Cardinal Health
  Wednesday, July 22, 2020
  Invitation only - Innovation Leaders Roundtable

  Learning quickly and inexpensively whether a new idea or problem is worth exploring is a key tenet of innovation. A design sprint can help us do just that. Adapted by Google Ventures from design thinking methodologies, a design sprint is a 5-day process for understanding business challenges and rapidly designing, prototyping and testing ideas with customers. Join us to learn from user experience design expert Rob Davlin, who will share his experiences with design sprints at Fuse, Cardinal Health’s innovation engine.

  Rob Davlin is a product (UX) designer and workshop facilitator at Fuse, Cardinal Health’s innovation engine. With a career that spans insurance, finance, energy, and healthcare, Rob brings a unique and potent blend of design thinking and real-world application to the field of user experience. Rob has conducted primary research on consumer products and user experiences for several Fortune 500 companies. Prior to working at Cardinal Health, he worked in UX design roles at Nationwide, JPMorgan Chase, IGS Energy, and CAS. He is also the founder of The Eureka Games, a collection of activities that challenges groups to rethink the way they think. Rob leverages the power of the experiential learning cycle to empower groups to be more than who they are. By planning structured experiences that achieve key learning themes, Rob has helped groups build rapport, improve communication skills, and increase the quality of their collaboration efforts. Rob received his BS in Design from The Ohio State University, studied abroad at the University of Industrial Arts of Helsinki and has specialized training in user experience design from the Nielsen Norman Group. Rob’s extensive travels across the world and the U.S. make his feet-on-the-ground approach to everything he does—including his workshops—an eye-opening experience for anyone willing to have their thinking challenged.

  Managing Innovation in the New Normal
  Featuring Micah Fening and Jenny Young, Senior Consultants, Nationwide Financial Innovation Team
  Thursday, June 4, 2020

  Organizations are grappling with unprecedented uncertainty while attempting to maintain forward momentum on initiatives that are crucial to future growth. How can we ensure that we are working on the most important projects, while balancing immediate customer and organizational needs? In this interactive discussion, innovation experts Micah Fening and Jenny Young will discuss how to prioritize near term, medium term, and long term initiatives and will also share tips for continuing to develop your organization’s innovation proficiency through virtual workshops and events. Join us to learn how the Nationwide Financial innovation team works collaboratively to prioritize innovation projects, manage uncertainty, and focus on an increasingly agile growth strategy.

  Micah Fening leads the Nationwide Financial (NF) Innovation portfolio work and the Living in Retirement domain strategy. In this role, he provides support for core and adjacent innovation for all NF lines of business through training and tools/templates to increase innovation evaluation and throughput. For the domain, he evaluates, prioritizes and activates opportunity areas for consumers transitioning and living in retirement. He partners closely with the P&C and Enterprise Innovation teams to drive innovation best practices throughout the company. Prior to joining the NF Innovation team, he spent seven years helping companies in healthcare and consumer products advance their innovation initiatives. He helped launch over a dozen products in the technology space, focused on mobile and Internet of Things devices, as well as tech-forward B2B services. Prior to his experience in the innovation space, Micah worked in financial consulting, helping Fortune 500 automotive and telecommunications clients.

  Jenny Young is a Senior Consultant on the Nationwide Financial Innovation Team focusing on empowering and inspiring leaders and associates on our innovation culture journey. She helps business lines focus on empathy and the customer and engage their design and development lenses to delight customers by meeting their needs, in ways they can't even imagine. She has been with Nationwide for 17 years serving in roles in both Financial Services and Property and Casualty focused on product strategy and management, process management, operations impact management, strategic partnerships and distribution strategy and design.

  Identifying Opportunities in Uncertain Times
  Featuring Jeff Curran, Founder of Innovation Outcomes and Innovation Leader at National Church Residences
  Wednesday, May 20, 2020

  While individuals and organizations grapple with this highly uncertain environment, innovation experts note that keeping an eye on changing business models and habits is a key area of focus right now. Innovation consultant, entrepreneur and Fisher alum Jeff Curran will engage in a discussion with Paul Reeder, Executive Director of the Center for Innovation Strategies, on identifying future growth opportunities in times of profound change. How can organizations manage costs while also exploring opportunities? How can innovation skillsets help companies endure and even grow through this pandemic? We’ll discuss these topics and also allow time for your questions.

  Jeff founded Innovation Outcomes to help companies better define and achieve measurable outcomes from their innovation efforts. Currently, the majority of Jeff’s time is spent as the Innovation Leader at National Church Residences where he works closely with the executive team to establish a portfolio of efforts to solve the challenges associated with our aging population. Previously, Jeff was the Leader of Innovation Portfolio Management and Product Strategy at Fuse, Cardinal Health’s innovation center. Jeff worked with Fuse leaders to build a balanced portfolio of healthcare solutions ranging from adjacent innovations to disruptive ideas that could solve today’s healthcare problems. Jeff played a key role in defining a new product innovation process and risk-tolerant environment that leveraged a hypothesis-led approach, experimentation and prototyping as a means of validation. Prior to Cardinal Health, Jeff was co-founder of an IT consulting company and a telecommunications software company, both of which had successful exits via acquisition. Jeff obtained an MBA from The Ohio State University Fisher College of Business and a BS in Computer Science from the University of Toledo.

  Design Thinking Behaviors: Empathize for Innovation
  Featuring Craig Turner, Executive Director at EDGE Innovation Hub
  Wednesday, March 4, 2020

  Without innovative solutions that keep us ahead of the curve, our organizations are ripe to be disrupted. One way to stay ahead of the game is to use design thinking behaviors, encouraging the learner to behave more innovatively to design better outcomes. In this interactive workshop you will learn how to form empathy for the user as a method for designing better outcomes, turn problems into opportunities, see possibilities instead of limitations and understand that creativity takes practice and development.

  Craig Turner is Executive Director at EDGE Innovation Hub — a food innovation ecosystem founded by Jim Grote of Donatos Pizza and the Grote Company. The EDGE’s vision is a future where food is abundant, accessible, healthful, sustainable, and delicious. Their mission is to build principle-based businesses that lead with love and drive food innovation to the edge of possibility. Craig’s passion is to create community. As a brand strategist, visual communication designer, artist, and musician, Craig uses innovation process to solve problems and help organizations grow.

  Valuing Your Innovation Pipeline and Organizing for Success
  Featuring Joe Wetli, Senior Director of New Product Development and Innovation, Worthington Industries
  Wednesday, February 12, 2020

  How do you value the ideas in your innovation pipeline? How can you ensure that your organization evolves in order to implement key growth projects?  Joe Wetli, Senior Director of New Product Development & Innovation at Worthington Industries, will discuss how to generate and measure value creation opportunities in your innovation pipeline and execute new projects that deliver value for your organization.

  Joe Wetli, Senior Director of New Product Development and Innovation for Worthington Industries, has now built an innovation team from scratch for two different companies, creating a highly skilled team with the ability to create and execute upon a high value pipeline of new products. His team leads a variety of functions, such as consumer insights, product strategy, industrial design, engineering, and project management. Joe’s track record includes nearly 20 years of brand management and innovation, having driven growth for global brands such as General Mills, ConAgra and Elmer’s Products. He’s a firm believer that winning comes through teamwork, collaboration and “strategic creativity.” Joe holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mass Communications from Miami University of Ohio and a Master of Business Administration from The Ohio State University 

  Beyond the Idea: Executing Innovation Initiatives
  Featuring Center for Innovation Strategies Leadership, Jenny Heckscher and Paul Reeder
  Wednesday, January 15, 2020

  How can you ensure that your innovation initiatives reach their full potential? Generating innovative ideas is important, but it is only the beginning. Join us for an interactive discussion of how you can move beyond the idea to execute innovation projects. Learn how to overcome organizational barriers and implement a process for managing innovation initiatives through disciplined experimentation. 
  
  The session will be facilitated by Center for Innovation Strategies leadership, Jenny Heckscher and Paul Reeder.

• Open/Close Innovation Summit 2020 Sponsored by the Cullman Family

  Innovation Summit 2020 Sponsored by the Cullman Family

  PLEASE NOTE: THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED DUE TO UNIVERSITY RESTRICTIONS RELATED TO COVID-19 PUBLIC HEALTH CONCERNS. PLEASE STAY TUNED FOR FUTURE UPDATES.

  Scaling Innovation from Idea to Execution: 
  Aligning Strategy, Customer Experience & Workforce Development to Fuel Growth

  
  April 22, 2020 - POSTPONED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE
  9:00am - 1:00pm (doors open at 8:30am)
   

  How can organizations identify insights of strategic importance, to drive growth and prepare for the customer of tomorrow? Join us to explore this question and identify insights and resources to help your organization align strategy, people and process to create future growth opportunities.
   

  Timothy A. Judge, PhD
  Joseph A. Alutto Chair in Leadership Effectiveness, Fisher College of Business 
  Executive Director, Fisher Leadership Initiative

   

  Keynote Speaker
  Renee Cacchillo, Executive Vice President and Chief Customer Experience Officer, Safelite Group 

  Preparing for the Customer of Tomorrow
  As the architect of Safelite’s customer driven strategy, Renee Cacchillo will share successes and challenges related to aligning customer experiences, marketing efforts and technical enhancements to create a culture of innovation. She will employ a case study approach to encourage interaction and discussion of leading practices in improving customer and business insights to make services and experiences easier for the customer. 

  Tracy Stephens, Founder, Tracy Stephens Consulting and former P&G Principal Scientist, Global Innovation

  Interactive Workshop - Identifying Insights to Drive Innovation
  The lifeblood of innovation is insight, particularly deep human insights. Equally important is selection of the insights that can be of most strategic importance, and internalization of the underlying “tensions to be solved” or opportunities they present. Only then can insights drive strategy and day to day work, and break the “busy achieving nothing” curse that can plague hard working but strategically paralyzed organizations. In this interactive, hands-on session, Tracy will share practical approaches gleaned from dozens of global and US projects across multiple categories and businesses to help organizations avoid this fate and amplify the business impact of every employee’s efforts.

   

  OnRamp Student Innovation Accelerator and Talent Pipeline
   

  Student teams will share their findings from participating in OnRamp, an innovation accelerator designed to help companies’ vet early stage ideas. Learn more about this exciting experiential learning program that connects you with Ohio State’s student talent pipeline, creates an outlet for corporate ideation and exposes your associates to the lean-startup process and customer-driven solutions.
   

• Open/Close Innovation Leaders Roundtable - November 21, 2019

  Innovation Leaders Roundtable

  Thursday, November 21: Leveraging Your Innovation Center
  Co-hosted with the Center for Operational Excellence. Invitation-only

  With so many organizations placing innovation at the forefront of their strategic goals, the creation of physical innovation spaces is growing. Innovation work spaces are an opportunity to change how, where, and when people connect for value creation through the development of new products and services. In an increasingly digital world, these spaces encourage face-to-face collaboration, daily interaction with technology, and a shared entrepreneurial focus on developing new methods, products, and ideas.

  The Center for Operational Excellence and the Center for Innovation Strategies invite you to this benchmarking session featuring leaders from AEP, Donatos, and SafeliteGroup. Hosted at EDGE Innovation Hub, a food technology innovation center founded by Donatos, attendees will have the opportunity to experience a hands-on ecosystem driving food industry innovation while learning about alternative approaches to physical innovation spaces and reviewing leading practices.

  Panelist and speakers include:

  Craig Turner, Executive Director, EDGE Innovation Hub
  Ashley Weaver, VP, Operations and Performance Transformation, AEP
  Bruce Millard, VP, Digital & Customer Innovation, SafeliteGroup
  Jim Colvin, Director of Research & Technology, WillowWood Global
  Moderator: Paul Reeder, Executive Director, The Ohio State University, Center for Innovation Strategies

• Open/Close Cannabiz Innovation Sprint Final Pitch Event - November 14, 2019

  Cannabiz Final Pitches

  November 14
  11:00am – 12:30pm
  Mason Rotunda

  

   

  The Center for Innovation Strategies is pleased to partner with the Drug Enforcement Law and Policy Center at the Moritz College of Law on the second annual Ohio State Cannabiz Innovation Sprint. Join us for a final pitch featuring the top five student proposals for innovative ideas related to the cannabis industry. The Cannabiz Innovation Sprint guides multidisciplinary student teams through a comprehensive process to develop disruptive solutions to one of today’s most unique emerging markets. 

• Open/Close Fall 2019 Speaker Series

  Design Thinking Empathy Workshop for Leaders
  Featuring Gretchen Goffe, Principal, GCG Consulting & DT Live Lab
  Wednesday, September 11, 2019
   

  We know how to assess feasibility and viability, but what about desirability?
  This is where so many ideas fail, because the customer need wasn't uncovered at the outset. Design thinking has gained prominence as a way of approaching innovation that puts humans and their unmet needs at the center. In this hands-on workshop, you’ll learn the power of empathy mining first hand plus some ‘quick and cheap’ methods for practicing radical empathy. You will leave with a powerful new tool: how to do empathy interviews. This is where the magic happens, when customers challenge what we thought we knew and reveal new needs we hadn't seen before.
  
  The 90-minutes will go quickly as we continue by translating our insights into actionable, inspiring, and succinct design challenges and look beyond product solutions to find new ways to combine capabilities, channels, networks and more to create and capture new value. We will end by reflecting on the assumptions we make in our own businesses and the opportunities we may be missing.
  
  Wednesday, Sept 11, 2019, 9:00-10:30am 
  Where: Mason Hall 2nd Floor Rotunda, 250 W. Woodruff Avenue Columbus, OH 43210
  Parking is available in the Lane Avenue and Tuttle Parking Garages.

  Gretchen Goffe, Principal, GCG Consulting & DT LiveLab
  Gretchen has 20+ years’ experience in innovation in regulated industries with a focus on understanding the intersection of human behavior, the possibilities of technology and the needs for business success. Gretchen’s experience includes commercializing technology into new products and business lines for Huntington National Bank and consulting on strategic innovation opportunities. She was Principal Partner and Founding Partner at Pink Tank and The Well in the billion-dollar health and wellness space with clients including P&G Futureworks, Abbott Nutrition, Eli Lilly, Wyeth Consumer, Bayer, Bumblebee, Kraft and others. Gretchen founded GCG, where design thinking theory meets practice, 4 years ago to focus on the practical application of design thinking for corporations, changing mindsets and corporate culture. GCG offers a suite of design thinking courses and developed with SODOLO teaching method that has been getting rave reviews from Fortune 500 clients and is now accessible to start-ups, small and large businesses and design thinking consulting services. The newest addition is the DT LiveLAB, unique in that it allows live practice interviews with customers as a novel way for design thinkers to cement learnings.

  
  Innovation: From Buzzword to Managed Outcomes
  Featuring Jeff Curran, Founder, Innovation Outcomes & Innovation Leader, National Church Residences 
  Wednesday, October 23, 2019

  Innovation might be the most overused buzzword of the decade. In the spirit of being more innovative, it is not uncommon to see organizations jump at the opportunity to open an innovation center or lab or kickoff an innovation campaign – but have these organizations thought through the underlying framework and structures necessary to produce an agreed upon set of outcomes? Are your innovation efforts integrated and aligned across the organization? Do senior leaders and managers agree on measures of success? How can you identify and overcome barriers to innovation? Join us for an interactive discussion on these questions and more as Jeff Curran shares helpful tips and advice from his experience in corporate innovation and entrepreneurship.
  
  Wednesday, October 23, 2019, 9:00-10:30am 
  Where: Mason Hall 2nd Floor Rotunda, 250 W. Woodruff Avenue Columbus, OH 43210
  Parking is available in the Lane Avenue and Tuttle Parking Garages.

  Jeff Curran, Founder Innovation Outcomes and Innovation Leader, National Church Residences
  Jeff founded Innovation Outcomes to help companies better define and achieve measurable outcomes from their innovation efforts. Currently, the majority of Jeff’s time is spent as the Innovation Leader at National Church Residences where he works closely with the executive team to establish a portfolio of efforts to solve the challenges associated with our aging population. Previously, Jeff was the Leader of Innovation Portfolio Management and Product Strategy at Fuse, Cardinal Health’s innovation center. Jeff worked with Fuse leaders to build a balanced portfolio of healthcare solutions ranging from adjacent innovations to disruptive ideas that could solve today’s healthcare problems. Jeff played a key role in defining a new product innovation process and risk-tolerant environment that leveraged a hypothesis-led approach, experimentation and prototyping as a means of validation. 
  Prior to Cardinal Health, Jeff was co-founder of an IT consulting company as well as a telecommunications software company, both of which had successful exits via acquisition. Jeff obtained an MBA from The Ohio State University and a BS in Computer Science from the University of Toledo.

   

  Scaling Innovation from Idea to Impact: Insights from the 2019 State of Crowdsourced Innovation
  Featuring Virginia Lee Williams, VP Global Innovation Management Solutions
  Thursday, November 14, 2019

  “Innovation is Rewarded.  Execution is worshipped.” – Eric Thomas

  Scale and diversity are required to create an innovation culture, engage employees, and generate the best ideas.  But how are leading companies breaking down departmental silos and geographical barriers, eliminating bias, and tapping into their most valuable resource – their people – to solve tough innovation challenges?  And perhaps more importantly, how are they bridging the gap between selecting winning ideas and realizing the measurable benefits of innovation?  

  In this interactive session, Virginia Lee Williams will share the latest industry research from the 2019 State of Crowdsourced Innovation benchmark study that reveals the strategies, structures, processes, and tools companies are using to scale innovation across the enterprise and achieve their strategic objectives. 
   

  Thursday, November 14, 2019, 9:00-10:30am
  Where: Mason Hall 2nd Floor Rotunda, 250 W. Woodruff Avenue Columbus, OH 43210
  Parking is available in the Lane Avenue and Tuttle Parking Garages.

  Virginia Lee Williams, VP Global Innovation Management Solutions, leads the Planview Spigit customer-facing organization focused on ensuring customer success and growth. Virginia brings over 20 years of experience in sales and marketing leadership roles in a variety of technology industries. She has served as a champion for her customers during her entire career. At every company. In every part of the world. She reveres customers and thrives on motivating others to be the best they can be. Crowdsourced innovation is not only a practice for Virginia – but also a heart-felt passion.

  About Planview Spigit
  More than 500 companies across 170 countries spanning every industry use Planview Spigit to drive continuous innovation, fuel employee engagement, create a culture of innovation, and provide analytics driven insights across the enterprise. For more information, visit www.planview.com.

• Open/Close Information Session: Center for Innovation Strategies OnRamp Innovation Accelerator

  Thursday, June 20, 2019, 9:00-10:00am
  Mason Hall Rotunda, 2nd Floor
  
  
  Learn about the Center for Innovation Strategies OnRamp Innovation Accelerator

  Join us at our next workshop to learn how you can engage our student talent pipeline to test early stage ideas.
  
  OnRamp is a corporate innovation accelerator driven by entrepreneurial-minded students at The Ohio State University. Given initial concepts generated by a corporate sponsor, a group of students conduct customer validation and innovation techniques over a multi-week program to result in out-of-the-box solutions. Program manager Christian Lampasso will provide an overview of the program, and current OnRamp students will engage with attendees to illustrate their process for uncovering potential customer needs and pain points.

• Open/Close Spring 2019 Speaker Series

  Tuesday, April 2, 2019
  Mindsets of Prolific Innovators, Innovation Teams, and Innovative Organizations
  Featuring Dan Haber, Co-Founder, Flow Innovation

  Are you overwhelmed by the pace of change in your industry? Does your company need to transform to thrive in this rapidly changing world amidst tech giants and startups? Are you and your peers getting lost in innovation hype? Wondering how to help your team adapt amidst the chaos and create a better and longer lasting business?

  In this interactive session, Dan will bring to life stories and lessons of innovation leadership from his own experiences and from a variety of companies that have made history through innovation. He’ll shed light on some shifts in mindsets that help prolific innovators, innovation teams, and innovative companies thrive amidst uncertainty and rapid change. In this session you’ll hear new perspectives on some time-tested principles that industry pioneers have used to reinvent their businesses and entire industries. You’ll also take away useful mindset checks that will be helpful regardless of where you are on your innovation journey. However, don’t expect an easy path…innovation can be very fulfilling, but an innovator’s journey is rarely easy.

  About Dan Haber
  Dan is a serial corporate innovator, intrapreneur, and entrepreneur with a rare blend of experiences across the innovation spectrum over more than 15 years. Dan has led groundbreaking R&D teams, early stage startups, corporate spinoffs, and corporate innovation teams reinventing the businesses of Fortune 500s. He has a proven track record of repeatedly cultivating highly effective teams that rapidly innovate in the most complex environments, including aerospace, healthcare, and financial services. Dan is passionate about building purpose-driven and dynamic teams that create innovations that transform lives, industries, and the world. Dan is the cofounder of Flow Innovation, a tight-knit team of serial entrepreneurs and corporate innovators who have a proven track record of helping organizations leapfrog their industries, create more value for their customers and business, and capture significant market share. The Flow team helps companies focus, accelerate, and create transformative impact from innovation investments.

  Wednesday, May 8, 2019
  Managing for Total Innovation: Behaviors, Tools and Communication for Innovation Success

  Many companies struggle with managing an innovation process that aligns efforts across the entire organization. In this session, Micah Fening and Jenny Young from the Nationwide Financial Innovation Team will share information on their dual innovation organization model, how to encourage behaviors that foster innovation, and how to leverage tools and communication to ensure strategic alignment of innovation efforts. Join us for knowledge sharing and networking around the topic of building a purposeful innovation strategy that establishes metrics and a portfolio approach for managing innovation.

  About Micah Fening
  Micah Fening leads the Nationwide Financial (NF) Innovation portfolio work and the Living in Retirement domain strategy. In this role, he provides support for core and adjacent innovation for all NF lines of business through training and tools/templates to increase innovation evaluation and throughput. For the domain, he evaluates, prioritizes and activates opportunity areas for consumers transitioning and living in retirement. He partners closely with the P&C and Enterprise Innovation teams to drive innovation best practices throughout the company. Prior to joining the NF Innovation team, he spent the last seven years helping companies in healthcare and consumer products advance their innovation initiatives. He helped launch over a dozen products in the technology space, focused on mobile and Internet of Things devices, as well as tech-forward B2B services. Prior to his experience in the innovation space, Micah worked in financial consulting, helping Fortune 500 automotive and telecommunications clients in corporate tax and audit defense at the state level.

  About Jenny Young
  Jenny Young is a Senior Consultant on the Nationwide Financial Innovation Team focusing on empowering and inspiring leaders and associates on our innovation culture journey. She helps business lines focus on empathy and the customer and engage their design and development lenses to delight customers by meeting their needs, in ways they can't even imagine. She has been with Nationwide for 15 years serving in roles in both Financial Services and Property and Casualty focused on product strategy and management, operations impact management and distribution strategy and design.

• Open/Close Winter 2019 Speaker Series

  Wednesday, January 23, 2019: Building an Innovation Culture

  Chris Johnson, Director of Enterprise Technology, American Electric Power, will share his journey toward inspiring an innovation culture at AEP. Join us to share leading practices and connect with other innovation professionals.
  
  Chris Johnson has worked at American Electric Power since early 2012. He currently serves as Director of Enterprise Innovation and Technology, where he develops first of its kind solutions that bring new value to customers, establishing strategic partnerships and inspiring an innovation culture transformation within an industry that is on the cusp of renewal. He is also President of Kyte Works, an AEP company that specializes in direct enterprise strategy on technical and business model innovation to create new value for customers, employees and companies. Chris received his Bachelor of Science, Environmental, Safety, and Occupational Health Management from the University of Findlay.

  Wednesday, Februrary 27, 2019: Vetting and Measuring Innovation Projects

  In this session, Adam Ward will draw on his extensive experience in strategy, innovation and product development to discuss a process for vetting and prioritizing innovation ideas and for selecting and applying metrics to your innovation process. Join like-minded innovation professionals for an interactive discussion of leading innovation practices. We will also have copies of Adam's recently released book available for purchase, Lean Design in Healthcare: A Journey to Improve Quality and Process of Care. He will also be available after the session to sign them.

   

  Adam Ward is an Innovation Leader with over 25 years of strategy and product development experience. He began his career as a design engineer at Honda R&D before becoming the Lean Product Development Strategy Leader at GE Healthcare. Now at Simpler, an IBM Health Company, Adam coaches C-Suite healthcare teams worldwide on client delivery redesign with a focus on new product development, services enhanement and organizational transformation. He is one of the early adopters of innovation techniques in healthcare and has been at the ground level for major projects, including GE's $8B Diagnostic Imaging Division. He is the creator of GE's Disruptive Cost Workout methodology, which continues to be their business standard.

  
  As an innovation consultant with Simpler, Adam has guided cliients like Atrius Health, Northwestern Mutual, Lockheed Martin and the U.S. Air Force to leverage lean product development to increase the ability to create new products, services and patient-care models. His project at Lockheed Martin won their prestigious Team of the Year Improvement Award and Adam has won the President's Award from Honda, GE and Simpler for his innovation methods.

• Open/Close 2018 Events

  Spring 2018 Speaker Series 

  Are you Innovating or Stuck in Innovation Theater?
  January 18, 2019

  Hyper-growth start-ups are driving established companies out of the Fortune 500 and disrupting entire industries on a regular basis. Corporations find themselves more than ever in need of change, but many struggle to keep pace with the rapid pace of innovation.

  The traditional management practice of planning and control stifles enterprise innovation. To succeed, corporations need a different organizational structure. In this session, Brett will discuss how today's world demands a new management approach that transforms the risk of change into an asset. Ryan will lead a discussion on innovation and product creation.

  Ryan Frederick, Principal AWH
  In addition to being Principal at AWH, a product consulting and creation company, Ryan is the Director of Startup Grind, a global startup community designed to educate, inspire, and connect entrepreneurs. Ryan has helped many companies grow their sales, revenues, market share, and profitability. He has worked with companies across a variety industries and of all shapes and sizes. One of Frederick's passions is to help startups grow from inception, to viability, through to sustainability.

  Brett Buchanan, Director, Product Management at Gap Inc.
  Brett Buchanan is an experienced and proven product leader with a passion for delivering the right new set of technology investments to move the business forward. He has had the opportunity to build products from scratch, as well as grow and evolve existing businesses that are used by millions of people. Currently at Gap, Buchanan leads a team of product managers responsible for the payment experience and products.

  Managing Uncertainty in Innovation Projects with Dr. Aravind Chandrasekaran
  March 6, 2018

  The ability to manage uncertainty is key to executing innovation projects across the spectrum from incremental to radical innovation. In this 90 minute workshop, Dr. Aravind Chandrasekaran, award winning associate professor in management sciences at the Fisher College of Business, will lead an interactive exercise, followed by a discussion of how to identify and manage four different forms of project uncertainty, from variation to chaos. The exercise and discussion will highlight the importance of collaboration and agile thinking as well as finding a balance between planning and learning to achieve success with your innovation projects.

  Dr. Aravind Chandrasekaran is an Associate Professor in Management Sciences at the Fisher College of Business. He received his PhD in Operations and Management Sciences from the University of Minnesota. Dr. Chandrasekaran’s research investigates innovation, learning and knowledge creation issues in a variety of areas including high-tech R&D, manufacturing and health-care delivery. In recent years, he has begun to study the challenges involved in developing patient-centric healthcare models by working with several physician and nursing leaders. Learn more on Professor AC’s blog, Translating Research to Practice.

   

  Fall 2018 Speaker Series 

  September 12: The Art & Science of Innovation ROI-How the Foundation Impacts the Returns

  Innovation is the business buzzword of the day, but many companies haven't cracked the code on how to transform this vague notion into tangible financial ROI.

  Innovation is a newly charted territory, which means there is often ambiguity about how to define it, how to execute on it successfully and what the outcomes should be at the end of the day. Learn about the critical areas of success that many companies miss in their innovation journey. Kristen Jordan, Brightidea's Director of Professional Services, and Michelle Brown, Senior Account Executive at Brightidea will share strategies for turning your innovation vision into financial returns.

  Kristen Jordan, Director of Professional Services at Brightidea
  With twenty years of innovation and engagement experience, Kristen Jordan has an extensive amount of knowledge around the successes and pitfalls of innovation strategy and execution. Having managed the Humana Innovation Center and consulted with dozens of clients at various points in their innovation journey, she has driven success with companies large and small all across the world. Kristen is based out of Louisville, Ky.
  
  Michelle Brown, Senior Account Executive at Brightidea
  Working closely with Corporate Innovation teams for more than ten years, Michelle Brown, has a deep understanding of the challenges nascent innovation programs face. With her hands-on experience aligning executives and validating strategies, she helps teams minimize risk by guiding them through the process of formalizing their vision into an actionable plan. Michelle is based out of Brightidea HQ in San Francisco, CA.
  
  About Brightidea
  At Brightidea, we're passionate about innovation. We believe it's the lifeblood of progress, advancing the human condition and improving the world around us. To that end, we've set out to accelerate the success of innovation by empowering those behind it with advanced software to facilitate and streamline the ideation process--and the collaboration it thrives on.

  October 17: Innovation in Mature/Price Driven/"Boring" Categories
  
  Join innovation expert Tracy Stephens as she discusses how to innovate in categories where all that can be innovated on seems to have been done. This of course can be a major problem if a significant portion of your business portfolio is in these categories. She will share examples of categories that were re-energized, extended and expanded by nonobvious innovations. She will also share her 5-stage approach for unlocking a big idea in even the most challenging categories.

  About Tracy Stephens Consultancy
  After 30 years of global experience driving innovation in blue chip companies, 28 of those 30 working on P&G's billion dollar brands, Tracy Stephens Consultancy was born - to help businesses connect the dots, find the big idea and drive it to commercialization.

  November 13: Getting Out of Your Own Way - Overcoming Innovation Execution Challenges

  Drawing on his extensive experience empowering companies to solve human-centered problems, David Shaw, director of brand strategy at IBM iX, will help you understand how to overcome challenges with the execution side of innovation. David will provide insights on better aligning people and processes to deliver on customer insights and implementing your innovation initiatives in way that is differentiated, sustainable and true to your brand.

   

  Fisher Summer Sessions: The Digital Economy 

  Digital technology is the driving force in our faster and more connected world, transforming how we interact, how we live, and how we work. In the business world, this has led to disrupted industry titans and new power players, putting power in the hands of customers and fundamentally changing the jobs we do. In this digital economy, how do we keep and grow a customer base with shifting brand loyalty and increasingly higher standards? And how do we adapt to the new technological demands in the jobs we have – and hire for?

  The Ohio State University Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and Center for Operational Excellence are pleased to partner with Fisher College of Business’ National Center for the Middle Market and Risk Institute to offer a pair of morning sessions focused on the digital economy. The June session looks downstream at the new imperative of the customer experience, while the August session presents recent research on the digitalization of the workforce.

  The Digital Economy, Part 1: The Customer
  Wednesday, June 27: 9am - noon

  In today’s digitized world, it’s no longer just about the product or the service – it’s about the customer experience, and a company’s ability to deliver a great one can be a key differentiator. Many B2C and B2B organizations, however, aren’t designed from the ground up to deliver a great customer experience. So how can they get there?

  

  In this session, co-authors Tom Stewart and Patricia O’Connell present insights from their book Woo, Wow, and Win: Service Strategy and the Art of Customer Delight. Stewart, executive director of the National Center for the Middle Market, and O’Connell contend that customer experience is more than customer service. Instead, it must be woven into the fabric of the company, in each process and across all channels. Stewart and O’Connell show how to apply the principles of service design and close the gap between company strategy and customer experience – particularly as markets digitize. With this framework, organizations can define the experience they want, set customers’ expectations accordingly, and meet them at every critical point. Attendees will gain new insights on how to embed customer value throughout the value stream, not just at the final handoff.

  Next, IBM iX Director of Brand Strategy David Shaw will provide an inside look at how technology is creating new challenges for established brands and their relationships with customers.
  
  Finally, join us for a conversation with David Trimm, Chief Information Officer for The Wendy's Company, as he shares insights on how the company is working to transform the customer experience with mobile ordering and in-store kiosks, among other innovations, while staying true to the nearly half-century-old brand.

  The Digital Economy, Part 2: The Employee
  Wednesday, Aug. 8: 9am – 11:30am

  The summer sessions continue with this look at technological transformation and its implications inside the workplace, headlined by a featured keynote from Mark Muro, senior fellow and policy director of the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. Muro is the lead author on a fascinating and wide-ranging report published last fall, Digitalization and the American Workforce, that found the share of jobs requiring a low digital skill level has plunged since 2002 from 56 percent to 30 percent, while those requiring a high level of digital skill vaulted from a mere 5 percent in 2002 to 23 percent last year.

  Following the featured keynote, Muro will participate in a multi-industry discussion panel that also includes Cynthia Dungey, director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, and representatives from Honda and NiSource.

   

  June Innovation Practice Workshop

  June 6, 2018: Can Jobs-to-be-Done and Design Thinking be integrated to form one superior innovation approach?
  
  Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) and Design Thinking are two popular innovation approaches used by many companies. While each approach exists to help organizations drive innovation and growth, they have different philosophical foundations and, consequently, different strengths and weaknesses. Up until now, companies have had to choose one approach over the other. This has forced companies to miss out on the unique benefits of the approach not chosen. But what if there were a way to meld the best of each approach into one process? Can it be done? Would it deliver superior results?

  In this presentation, leaders from two consultancies - Urko Wood from Reveal Growth Consultants (a JTBD consultancy) and Monica Weiler, Ph.D. from the Stratos Innovation Group (a Design Thinking and Strategy Consultancy) - will present a brief overview of their respective approaches including the philosophical foundations and the strengths and weaknesses as they see it related to the other approach. They will also share their thoughts about how the best of each approach can be melded into one process that delivers superior results.

• Open/Close Innovation Summit 2018 sponsored by the Cullman Family

  Innovation Summit 2018
  Sponsored by the Cullman Family

  Wednesday, April 25, 2018
  9:00a.m. - 4:00pm
  Fawcett Center Ballrooms

  BUIDING AN ENTREPRENEURIAL CULTURE

  Organizations of all sizes strive to build a culture in which employees demonstrate an entrepreneurial mindset in order to drive innovation, sustainable growth and long-term impact. The Innovation Summit 2018 brings together perspectives from industry and academia to better understand strategies and tactics to transform culture and drive long-term growth.

  Join us to explore insights, resources and connections to help your organization address the challenges and opportunities related to building an entrepreneurial culture.

  Who will attend: Entrepreneurial-minded leaders, academics & students. Innovators, technology leaders, R&D experts, marketing executives and managers from diverse industries.

  Featured Speakers

  Bob Welsh, Vice President of Breakthrough Innovation, Stanley Black and Decker, Inc.

  Investing in an Ecosystem of Breakthrough Innovation
  Mr. Welsh will share Stanley Black and Decker's ongoing journey to cultivate a culture of innovation in this multinational organization, including a highly successful product innovation made possible through the support and collaboration of senior leadership, the core business and the breakthrough innovation team.

  
  Interactive Panel: Successes and Challenges of Innovation Projects and Initiatives

  Moderator: Dr. Tanya Menon, Associate Professor of Management & Human Resources, Fisher College of Business
  Companies continually strive to create a collaborative, customer-centric environment to drive growth. Our panel of experts will share their own journeys to build an innovation initiative, followed by roundtable discussions.

  Featuring:

  
  Kathy Domer
  Senior Manager, Customer Innovation
  Safelite

  
  Todd Fitz
  Principal Engineer, Advanced Materials Research
  Honda R&D Americas

  
  Chris Johnson
  Director of Enterprise Innovation and Technology
  AEP

   

  Interactive Session with Dr. Aravind Chandrasekaran
  Associate Professor in Management Sciences, Fisher College of Business

  Strategic Innovation Simulation: Understanding and Managing Sustaining, Radical and Disruptive Innovation
  In this session, Dr. Aravind Chandrasekaran will help your organization better identify and manage sustaining, radical and disruptive innovation. Following a presentation, attendees will form teams and engage in a hands-on innovation simulation to learn how to manage innovation investment tradeoffs, address timing and investment across mature and new businesses, and make choices in response to market opportunities and financial and product constraints, all within an environment of uncertainty. Please bring a laptop or iPad for this simulation.
  
  View the agenda

• Open/Close 2017 Events

  Fisher Summer Sessions 2017

  Summer Session Part 1: Winning the Talent War
  July 18, 2017, 9:00am-noon

  The U.S. work force is at a turning point, with change swirling everywhere: Millennials are now the largest generation in the workplace. Baby boomers – and their decades of institutional knowledge – are nearing retirement after putting it off during last decade’s recession. Constant technological leaps are rewriting the rules for the skill sets that matter. What does this mean for organizations trying to attract and hire today’s talent? How does this change the game for their ongoing efforts to build an innovation culture and develop their existing employees?

  At this session, gain insights on this issue from three compelling angles:

  • The Big Picture: Brookings Institution Fellow Marek Gootman will be unveiling results of a new work-force survey conducted in conjunction with the National Center for the Middle Market. The survey, set to be released in late June, looks at how companies are responding to large-scale shifts in work-force dynamics to hire and retain workers.
  • The Ground War: Join four talent acquisition and management leaders from major Ohio-based companies for a wide-ranging panel discussion on how their organizations are responding to these work-force trends. The panel, moderated by Fisher HR expert Marc Ankerman, features:
    • Tony Moore, head of talent acquisition, Marathon Petroleum Corp
    • Will Shepherd, director of enterprise learning and development, Wendy's Co.
    • Kathy Smith, VP talent development, Nationwide
    • Kelly Wilson, VP HR-talent management, Cardinal Health
  • The Pipeline: Jamie Mathews-Mead, senior director of graduate career management at Fisher closes out the session with a look at how the college is preparing students to best meet companies’ rapidly evolving needs and how organizations can best partner with the college to build and grow their work forces.

   

  Summer Session Part 2: Data and Digital Disruption
  August 16, 2017, 9:00am-noon

  Fisher's Summer Series on top business challenges continues in August with a look at how the explosion of data and disruptive digital technologies are transforming businesses in a variety of industries.
  
  Today, technology companies aren’t the only ones that need to be worried about a disruptor appearing overnight and rewriting the rules of the game. The accelerating pace of digital innovation – and a related explosion of available data
  – is a force to be reckoned with in any industry, and successfully adapting for the digital age is becoming a critical factor in growing competitive edge. For companies that invest in staying ahead of the curve, the opportunities are many – but so are the risks.
  
  “Top Business Challenges: Data and Digital Disruption” features a blend of big-picture perspectives on digital disruption and risk along with a ground-level view inside companies finding their own way in this exciting new territory:
  
  Featured speakers at the session include:

  • Digital Vortex: Jeremy Aston, a senior director at IT giant Cisco, kicks off the morning with a look inside the company’s own digital transformation and research insights from Digital Vortex, a new book co-written by leaders in its Digitization Office. Past Cisco research has found that as many as 40 percent of industry incumbents could be affected by digital disruption in the next half-decade, yet only a quarter of executives say they’re proactively tackling the challenge.
  • Transformed Digital, Born Digital: The session continues with a pair of case studies of two very different companies leveraging data and digital technologies in unique ways to grow and thrive. Bruce Millard, VP of Digital and Customer Innovation at Columbus-based Safelite, will share how the 70-year-old company has transformed itself for the digital age. Mark and Megan Kvamme, founders of Columbus-based FactGem, follow up by sharing their “born digital” story and how they’ve harnessed the power of data analytics at their local startup.
  • Data and Digital Risk: Dennis Hirsch, director of the Program on Data and Governance at Ohio State’s Moritz College of Law, closes out the morning with a look at the many risks companies leveraging data and digital technology should be aware of.

   

  September Innovation Practice Workshop

  September 19, 2017: How to Deliver Dramatically Better Innovation Results with "Jobs-to-Be-Done" 

  We know from study after study that the key to successful growth is having a clear understanding of customers' unmet needs.
  
  Yet many leaders struggle with how to innovate, differentiate and grow because they don't know where their target customers' needs remain unmet. Without this information, it's very hard to create new offerings that matter, or brand messaging and positioning that connects. Instead, leaders resort to guessing about what will create value for customers and, not surprisingly, this leads to high failure rates, frustration, wasted resources and damaged reputation.
  
  Join CIE and Urko Wood to learn about the jobs-to-be-done approach to uncovering your customer's unmet needs in a form that is ideal for driving innovation and growth. The JTBD approach enables companies to:

  • Turn innovation into a predictable business process increasing new product success rates 2 - 3X
  • Create new offerings that customers want, experiences that delight, and messaging that connects
  • Complement and improve other approaches, e.g., design thinking, lean startup, etc.
  • Prevent wasting time and money on ideas customers don't want
  • Accelerate revenue growth

  
  Urquhart (Urko) Wood, Founder and President, Reveal Growth
  Urko started Reveal Growth Consultants in 2012 to help clients differentiate, innovate, and grow using the jobs-to-be-done approach. Some of his clients include Battelle Memorial, Becton Dickinson, Cintas, General Motors, Herman Miller, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, and NetJets. For seven years prior, he was a Strategy Advisor at Strategyn, the pioneer and leader of the jobs-to-be-done approach. Urko is a Contributing Writer on growth strategy for The Business Journals. He has a BA from Kenyon College and an MBA in Marketing from The Wharton School.

• Open/Close Innovation Summit 2017 Sponsored by the Cullman Family

  INNOVATION SUMMIT 2017
  _{SPONSORED BY THE CULLMAN FAMILY}

  Innovation and Disruption in the Next Digital Age
  Hosted by The Ohio State University
  Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship

  Wednesday, May 10, 2017, 8:30 a.m. - 4 p.m. Doors open at 8 a.m.
  Fawcett Center Ballrooms, 2400 Olentangy River Road, Columbus, OH 43210
  Breakfast and lunch provided

  Digital technologies — such as analytics, mobile, social media, embedded devices and artificial intelligence — continue to advance rapidly as enabling and disruptive forces in many industries. Join us to learn more about the strategic and organizational factors that drive successful innovation and digital transformation.

  The Ohio State University Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship’s Innovation Summit 2017 will bring together perspectives from industry and academia. We will explore a variety of frameworks, insights, resources and connections to better understand and address innovation challenges. The program will feature engaging speakers and unique and interactive program design.

  WHO WILL ATTEND:

  Entrepreneurial-minded leaders, academics & students. Innovators, technology leaders, R&D experts, marketing executives and managers from diverse industries

  FEATURED SPEAKERS

  Dr. Trish Gorman, Innovation Expert, The Ohio State University Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship

  Innovators, Disruptors & Strategists: Competing in the Digital Arena
  Dr. Gorman’s interactive session will provide tools and approaches to help you set your firm’s innovation agenda and strategize in the face of disruptive forces. How can your organization benefit from artificial intelligence, big data, IoT, social or mobile? Applying the fundamentals of innovation can help your firm harness digital technologies to create new sources of value. Trish Gorman is an educator and author with extensive consulting experience. She has developed innovation tools used in hundreds of organizations and leads programs in corporate entrepreneurship and innovative growth strategies.

  An Interview with Dan Manges, Chief Technology Officer, Root
  Conversation led by Ryan Frederick, Principal, AWH and Director, StartUp Grind
  Dan Manges is the CTO of Root, an auto insurance startup that uses data science to identify and insure good drivers. Root was started in 2015 in Columbus, Ohio, and has raised $7M from Drive Capital. By not insuring bad drivers, Root is able to reduce insurance premiums for good drivers significantly. Prior to Root, Dan was the founding CTO of Braintree, an online payments company that was acquired by PayPal in 2013 for $800M.

  INTERACTIVE EXPERT PANELS

  Opportunities and Challenges of Digital Transformation
  Facilitated by Jim Sonnett, Redwood Innovation
  Digital technologies continue to transform customer experience, internal processes and entire business models. Our expert panel will discuss strategies and challenges related to identifying and capturing new opportunities.

  Design Thinking and Disruption in the Wild
  Facilitated by Monica Weiler, Stratos Innovation Group
  More than ever, companies are using a design thinking approach to create disruptive solutions. Our unique workshop-style panel of experts and design thinking pioneers will discuss the realities of design thinking "in the wild" and will share their insights, successes and challenges. The discussion time will include rapid hands-on activities and useful tools to help you navigate the complexities and ambiguity when integrating design thinking into your innovation process.

• Open/Close Executive Education - Innovation Practice

  Infuse an Innovation Competency Into Your Organization
  Learn how to effectively harness the theories, tools and practices of innovation for your employees, teams and organization

  Sustainable innovation is one of the most important issues facing businesses today. The introduction of new ideas, products, services and processes that drive revenue growth for industries and companies requires a culture of innovation in which every employee is engaged.

  Our research and experience confirms that creating and maintaining an innovative culture requires trained experts to guide and encourage innovation.
  
  The Ohio State University Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and the Fisher College of Business Executive Education program are once again offeringInnovation Practice, an interactive, project-based course which provides strategies for top-line revenue growth across the organization. Over the course of five consecutive Fridays, students learn to apply the theories, tools and practices of innovation that create, capture and deliver value to an organization and its customers. Topics include the types and levels of innovation; ideation and design thinking; consumer research methodologies; competitive strategy; risk management and measurement; portfolio management; organizational structures; and leadership and culture.

  When: Five sessions on Fridays in 2016:
  January 22 8 a.m. - 1 p.m.
  January 29 8 a.m. - 5 p.m.
  February 5 8 a.m. - 5 p.m.
  February 12 8 a.m. - 5 p.m.
  February 19 8 a.m. - noon