Hey,

I came across an interesting seminar on innovation.  They've got some great speakers lined up for March in Berkeley Haas.  Anyone going, or maybe get a group to go and report back?

http://ideas.economist.com/

The Economist believes that the world is governed by ideas. Because human progress relies on the advancement of good ideas, we are launching a new series of events that brings together top thinkers from around the world to discuss and debate the most important ideas of our time. By focusing on Innovation, Intelligent Infrastructure, and Human Potential, we imagine an ecosystem where good ideas move from concept to implementation, fueled by the power of human ingenuity, and only the best survive. Welcome to the Ideas Economy.

The inaugural event, Innovation: Fresh thinking for the ideas economy, held at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley on March 23 and 24, will be unlike any other event organised on the topic. A multi-part, multimedia forum designed to fuse creativity with action, this event will expand and possibly overturn established thinking about what innovation is, where it comes from, and how to make it work.

Some of today’s top global innovators will examine and iterate on the genesis of good ideas, the great challenges of the twenty-first century, the question of whether we live in a flat world, the costs and benefits of crowdsourcing, the power of social entrepreneurship, the role of government in catalysing innovation, leveraging failure, finding innovation in a crisis, organising the teams of tomorrow, the phenomenon of reverse innovation, the future of open innovation, and how old economy actors are being disrupted in the new economy. Whether the impetus is to improve customer relationships, develop new products and services, explore untapped markets, or improve efficiency, companies today must implement more than just an R&D strategy to survive and thrive. Regardless of geography or industry, an organisation lives or dies by how it innovates.