The I3M Symposium - October 10, 2006 - Enabling Innovation Across Boundaries

The fall symposium of the Institute for Innovation in Information Management (I3M)will be held on the University of Washington campus on Tuesday, October 10. The theme for the day, “Enabling Innovation Across Boundaries” reflects the members’ interests in discovering the key enablers behind organizations that have documented success in turning creative ideas into products and services contributing to the bottom line.

In order to compete, and even survive, in today’s marketplace, organizations must be capable of innovating. More specifically, organizations should be able to innovate in a highly effective and efficient manner. Failure to innovate can lead to several undesirable consequences from loss of customers to extinction from the marketplace. While these realizations are pervasive among organizations, many have not yet identified how to address the innovation problem.

For the past several months, Dr. Kevin Desouza has been undertaking a research project funded by I3M to investigate this area through field interviews with key executives in organizations recognized as leaders in innovation. These interviews have been analyzed and a model for successful innovation will be presented based on the findings at the symposium. More information on the project and the participants is available on Kevin’s research blog at http://ideas4innovation.blogspot.com/.

To provide more insight into the practices the model is based on, a panel of study participants from a variety of organizations will respond to the presentation, and a structured discussion among all symposium participants will provide ample opportunity to find ways to apply the findings in their own organizations. The day will wind up with a presentation by Mike Williams, CIO of Parsons Brinckerhoff, discussing the business impact of another recent I3M sponsored project (“Beyond Knowledge Exchange: The Case of Practice Area Networks (PANs) at Parsons Brinckerhoff- more information available on the I3M website, and a presentation of candidate projects for the next research round sponsored by I3M.

A complimentary reception will follow the formal sessions, with an optional dinner for those interested in continuing the conversation. The symposium will be invitation only, through one of the partner organizations(Parsons Brinckerhoff, Washington Mutual, Quellos Group LLC, or the Disaster Resource Network) or the University of Washington I3M faculty members.