Peter A. Koen to chair Boston conference of Innovation Giants, "The Front End of Innovation," May 24-27

HOBOKEN, N.J. - Dr. Peter A. Koen, an Associate Professor in the Wesley J. Howe School of Technology Management at Stevens Institute of Technology, will chair a major technology management conference in May, sponsored by the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) and the Institute for International Research (IIR).

The Second Annual Front End of Innovation conference will be held in Boston, Mass., May 24-27, 2004. The keynote speaker line up includes Teresa M. Amabile, Harvard Business School; John Seely Brown, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center; Stephanie Burns, Dow Corning; Clayton Christensen, Harvard Business School; Dean Kamen, Inventor/Entrepreneur, DEKA Research & Development; and Eric von Hippel, MIT Sloan School of Management. Dr. Koen is a leading theorist and educator in the area of industrial front end innovation.

The event will focus on the most critical areas of the front end of innovation: Leadership, Opportunity Identification and Analysis, and Making High Risk Portfolio Decisions in Front End Projects.

Teresa M. Amabile commented on the importance of front end of innovation.

"Creativity is the generation and initial development of new, useful ideas," she said. "Innovation is the successful implementation of those ideas in an organization. Thus, no innovation is possible without the creative processes that mark the front end of the process: identifying important problems and opportunities, gathering relevant information, generating new ideas, and exploring the validity of those ideas."

Featured sponsors include SAP, Imaginatik, Invention-Machine, Product Genesis and conference endorsers, MIT Technology Review and Fast Company.

This event is open for registration and space is limited to 350 people. Group discounts and special rates are available. For more information and to register, call (888) 670-8200, email register@iirusa.com or visit: www.iirusa.com/frontend.

About the Event Organizers

Serving people with a professional interest in new products, The Product Development & Management Association (PDMA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the theory and practice of new product development and management. pdma.org

The Institute for International Research (IIR) is the world's largest conference company and has been the leader in the provision of business information for over 20 years. IIR produces over 5,000 events annually through our network of offices in over 35 countries. www.iirusa.com.

About Stevens Institute of Technology

Founded in 1870, Stevens Institute of Technology is one of the leading technological universities in the world dedicated to learning and research. Through its broad-based curricula, nurturing of creative inventiveness, and cross disciplinary research, the Institute is at the forefront of global challenges in engineering, science, and technology management. Partnerships and collaboration between, and among, business, industry, government and other universities contribute to the enriched environment of the Institute. A new model for technology commercialization in academe, known as Technogenesis®, involves external partners in launching business enterprises to create broad opportunities and shared value.

Stevens offers baccalaureates, master’s and doctoral degrees in engineering, science, computer science and management, in addition to a baccalaureate degree in the humanities and liberal arts, and in business and technology. The university has a total enrollment of 2,150 undergraduate and 3,500 graduate students, with about 250 full-time faculty. Stevens’ graduate programs have attracted international participation from China, India, Southeast Asia, Europe and Latin America. Additional information may be obtained from its web page at www.stevens.edu.  

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