Join us for the BIF-2 Blogjam!

In conjunction with next week's BIF-2 Collaborative Innovation Summit, please join us at the BIF-2 Blogjam where an amazing group of bloggers will be posting live throughout the day on Wednesday, October 4th and Thursday, October 5th.

BIF-2 brings together innovators from across the public and private sectors to share stories about creating change and driving innovation. BIF media partner Corante will be hosting the blogjam through its Innovation Hub and guest bloggers include:

Renee Hopkins Callahan who is the editor of Corante's Innovation Hub, Renee authored one of the Web's first blogs on innovation at IdeaFlow, and is the Director of Innovation Services at Decision Analyst in Arlington, Texas. She is a former journalist who worked as an editor and reporter for The Dallas Morning News and the Nashville Tennessean, and was managing editor of D, the Dallas city magazine. Renee blogs at Idea Flow.

Jeff De Cagna who is chief strategist and founder of Principled Innovation LLC, the association community’s leading voice for innovation. Jeff has more than a decade of service to regional, national and international associations in the Washington, DC area, including the Greater Washington Society of Association Executives and the Special Libraries Association. Jeff blogs at Principled Innovation.

Francois Gossieaux who is president of Corante, Inc. Prior to Corante he was consulting on marketing and new media, involved with BlogBridge, and the founder of Synopia, Inc. Francois has a long history with online media –having implemented an Intranet for a large multinational in the early 90's; and being the organizer of the first large scale virtual event–InterAct'96–with Time Magazine and Infoworld. He has used blogs for grassroots political and environmental activities, and is currently blogging at Emergence Marketing.

Steve Hardy who is the founder of Creative Generalist, a popular weblog for curious divergent thinkers. He is formerly the Business Director of 2004's Magazine of the Year Maisonneuve (eclectic curiosity) and is currently a creative producer of wireless media at Airborne Entertainment. Steve blogs at Creative Generalist.

Lois Kelly who left big agencies eight years ago to found Foghound, a strategic communications consulting firm. The author of Beyond Buzz: The Next Generation of Conversational Marketing, Lois believes the root cause of many business and marketing problems is communications. She’s dedicated her career to helping companies talk about their companies and issues in ways that get people to buy, believe and change, no matter how complex the topic or how competitive the market. Lois blogs at Bloghound .

Jeffrey Phillips who is VP of Sales and Marketing for OVO, a firm dedicated to helping its customers create sustainable, repeatable innovation processes, and delivering software applications to enable the processes. He writes several blogs and speaks and writes about innovation and workgroup productivity. Jeffrey’s blog is Innovate on Purpose.

Boris Pluskowsk who is a director at Imaginatik Research, a branch of Imaginatik, the Ideas Management software company, founded in the UK in 1994. Boris is a recognized expert in knowledge and innovation management, with over 9 years of experience working with and within companies such as PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Seagram, The Inter-American Development Bank, Cadbury Adams, CapitalOne, NCR and IBM. Boris’ blog is Corporate Innovation.

Joyce Wycoff who is co-founder of the Innovation Network, an organization focused on helping organizations develop a core competency of innovation. Joyce has a broad background in management and marketing and a deep understanding of organizational innovation. She is the author of several books on innovation and creativity, including Mindmapping, Transformation Thinking and To Do … Doing … Done! Joyce blogs at Heads Up! on Organizational Innovation.

The BIF-2 Collaborative Innovation Summit will be hosted by Wall Street Journal technology columnist Walt Mossberg and architect, author, and TED founder Richard Saul Wurman. The Summit format—more conversation than conference—is unique. Presenters have only fifteen minutes on stage to share personal reflections on how they created innovation or catalyzed change. Groups of storytellers are blocked around generous breaks that give participants and storytellers ample opportunity to interact. Most importantly, storytellers fully participate in the entire event as members of the audience. (Head here for our complete list of storytellers.)

In addition to the real-time blogjam taking place, the Business Innovation Factory will also be capturing the summit experience on film and BIF-2 storyteller vignettes will be available immediately following the summit at www.businessinnovationfactory.com.

I'd like to thank our media partner Corante for agreeing to host this incredible gathering of bloggers and look forward to connecting with everyone for what promises to be a very cool event!

Posted September 26, 2006 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

Customer Centric Health Care? BIF/RISD Collaboration Shifts Into High Gear

For many, the word "design" conjures images of sleek architecture, hip new products, or avant-garde fashion. But for the eight designers leading BIF's Health Care Innovation Project, it wasn't plans for a new building or new product that brought them together last week. It was the prospect of designing a better healthcare system.

The idea of using "design thinking" to solve big problems may be a relatively new idea in the world-at-large, but not for many students and faculty at the Rhode Island School of Design. That's why BIF's Patient Experience Lab partnered with RISD to run a project aimed at understanding and improving the interaction between patients and primary care physicians.

"For too long we've looked at the healthcare system—a system on the verge of collapse—from the perspective of healthcare providers and insurers, not from the perspective of the patient," said BIF Chief Catalyst Saul Kaplan. "This project will bring new visibility to how patients experience primary care and open up opportunities for improving this experience, bringing us closer to our goal of providing higher quality, lower cost healthcare."

Led by RISD faculty members Charlie Cannon and Michael Lye, the project is creating a detailed depiction of the experience patients have interacting with primary care providers. From the physical spaces where this interaction takes place to the systems and processes that dictate how information is exchanged, the RISD designers are mapping how each component contributes to the quality and effectiveness of the overall experience.

"Design thinking can be applied broadly to messy social problems like healthcare," said Cannon at a recent meeting with BIF leadership. "Instead of theorizing about the impact of design from atop the ivory tower, this project gives us the opportunity to stop agonizing about the problem and actually do the work."

"Working as an architect, the design solutions I worked on were based on a client's preconceptions. For this project, things are different with BIF providing a neutral platform to help us find the best solutions," said designer Matthew Suplee, a second year industrial design graduate student and former architect from Louisiana.

"The team can use Rhode Island as a test bed for ideas and that the state's small size and dense networks make it possible to directly connect with the people that make up the primary care system," commented Lye. The design team will put these networks to the test as they guide the students through a series of field observations and interviews with patients, care providers and insurers.

Posted September 08, 2006 by Allan Tear | Permalink | Comments (0)

What are Conferences For?

Last year, Richard Saul Wurman, founder of TED, TEDMED and eg2006, retired from the event business. We must be doing something right because we managed to bring him out of retirement to co-host our annual BIF-2 summit in October. Harvard Business Review recently spoke with Wurman on what it takes to create a memorable meeting.

"At my conferences, the best speeches were always by brilliant, vulnerable individuals who could tell a fresh story about their passions, ideas and failures. They don't spoon-feed information or talk down to the audience. They let people taste and experience their ideas for themselves. And the audience creates its own intelligent connections among all the different ideas presented."

We couldn't have said it better. Now in its second year, The Business Innovation Factory’s Collaborative Innovation Summit is more than a meeting. It’s part of who we are. The Summit experience reflects our value and mirrors BIF’s vision to create a community of innovators committed to exploring and testing new ways of delivering value. BIF-2 isn’t a conference. It’s a conversation.

BIF-2 enables us do what most meeting organizers only dream about: let great people tell great stories. Presenters—storytellers who naturally align to the Summit’s format—have only fifteen minutes on stage to share personal reflections on how they catalyzed change. Groups of storytellers are blocked around generous breaks that give participants and storytellers ample opportunity to interact.

Don't miss Richard Saul Wurman, and Wall Street Journal technology columnist Walt Mossberg, as they bring their unique talents to the BIF-2 stage and guide participants through a program that includes Segway inventor Dean Kamen, Nestlé Purina Vice President Betsy Cohen, Gap Inc. Executive Vice President Ivy Ross, Sirius Satellite Radio Executive Vice President Mary Pat Ryan, Anatomical Travelogue creator Alexander Tsiaras, Pandora.com founder Tim Westergren, and Titanic Discoverer Bob Ballard, among many others.

Join the conversation and register today at www.businessinnovationfactory.com/bif2

Posted September 01, 2006 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)