Idea Communities: How to Turn Your Customers and Employees Into Innovation Partners

Companies are facing enormous pressure from the market and company stakeholders to innovate, and to do it fast. The phenomenon of Web 2.0 and social networking is providing a new way in which companies look at innovation. Companies don't have to rely only on their employees to generate and foster company innovations. In fact, in many cases the market is demanding that we listen and respond to external ideas. Accept software has been working with industry experts and top companies to promote and discuss this new wave of innovation techniques and best practices.

In this session, we will provide examples of companies that are demonstrating the business value of community engagement for innovation. We will identify the opportunities and challenges with this approach, and how to overcome them. Then, we'll review an action plan for deploying an innovation network and how to prioritize, manage, and transform those ideas into product and service innovations.
Attendees will leave with an understanding of:
- Why community engagement for innovation is essential for their business
- The challenges of social innovation and how to overcome them
- Best practices for deployment of a community-based idea capture system
- How to prioritize, manage, and transform ideas into real product and service innovations

Speaker: James Gentes, Director of Product Management/ Voice of the Market, Accept Software. He is a product management professional who has delivered a number of successful enterprise software products to market. Prior to joining Accept, James spent 9 years at VERITAS Software and Symantec Corporation, where he was responsible for product and business strategy. He was Product Manager for the market-leading VERITAS Cluster Server product line, and now manages voice of the market strategy and products for Accept Software.

$10 for members, $20 for non-members.

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