BIF Field Trip: I'll be live-blogging next week's World Innovation Forum

Christine Flanagan
April 30, 2009

I'll be in New York City next week (May 5th and 6th) covering the World Innovation Forum at the Nokia Theater. The agenda includes our own BIF research advisory Clay Christensen as well as C.K. Prahalad, Vijay Govindarajan Paul Saffo and Dan Ariely. (Interesting that someone from the design world didn't get a seat at this illustrious table.)

I'm sure the topic of conversation will be the economy. In the coming weeks and months, the federal government is going to throw a lot of money at some very big problems. A $787 billion stimulus package is market making money. But will it drive the radical changes we need in areas like healthcare and education? Will it enable systems-level innovation?

If you subscribe to Clay's theories on disruptive innovation (and I do), then you agree that unless an entirely new system (or ‘value network’ to use Clay’s terminology) can displace the old one, any attempts to introduce a disruptive product or service will most likely be co-opted to maintain a sustaining status quo.I hope to ask each one of the speakers questions related to this topic.

In addition to the big thinkers listed above, there will also be a handful of case studies presented. I'm most looking forward to learning more about Linda Avey's 23ANDME. The start-up won Time Magazine's 2008 Invention of the Year with its high-density custom genome scan.

Stay tuned for daily updates and tweets: @chrisflanagan and follow hashtag #wif09

Twitter accounts for other great bloggers at #wif09 include @SteveTodd,  @stu, @hsmamericas, @innovate, @reneecallahan, @andreaMeyer, @pinnovation, @yourboot, @katiekonrath, @michaelstallard, @pauldunay, @robyngreenspan