Innovation has been dubbed as one of the more promising purpose-driven applications of social and collaborative technology in the enterprises. Whether as a way to encourage customers or internal employees, Innovation Programs in enterprises have unlocked critical ideas at well known enterprises that has ultimately led to the conception of new product ideas, significant cost savings internally and finally, operational efficiency. Sameer Patel, founding partner at the Sovos Group will moderate a session to highlight the opportunity and challenges that organizations face as they seek to unlock critical insight coming from customers, partners and employees.

Panel discussions with HP, Intuit and SAP.

Susie Wee is the Chief Technology Officer of Client Cloud Services in HP's Personal Systems Group. Prior to this, Susie was the founding Vice President of the Experience Software Business in HP's Personal Systems Group and the lab director of the Mobile and Media Systems Lab in HP Labs, where she started her career as a researcher in multimedia networking technologies. Susie was the co-editor of the JPSEC standard for the security of JPEG-2000 images. In addition to working at HP Labs, Susie was a consulting assistant professor at Stanford University where she co-taught a graduate-level course on digital video processing. Susie received the Technology Review Top 100 Young Innovators award in 2002, the ComputerWorld Top 40 Innovators under 40 in 2007, and the INCITs Technical Excellence award in 2007. She was selected to be an IEEE Fellow in 2009 for her contributions in multimedia technology. She has over 50 international publications and over 40 granted patents. Susie received her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. She authors two blogs entitled "Research, Technology, and Teamwork" and "Reflections". Susie is passionate about the intersection of experience, business, technology, and teamwork.

Tad Milbourn is responsible for managing Intuit Brainstorm, Intuit’s online innovation catalyst. In his time at Intuit, Tad has worked to change mindset in regards to innovation at all levels of the company. Through thought leadership and evangelizing Intuit Brainstorm, Tad has helped to increase ideation, reduce product time-to-market, and engage employees in innovation. Tad received his undergraduate degree in management from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Marco ten Vaanholt is Vice President for SAP Community Network responsible for the SAP Business Process Expert Community (bpx.sap.com); and the SAP Business Objects Community (boc.sap.com) strategy and programs.

He also heads up the Business and Solution Management Organization that focuses on newer and less well-established areas, including product solution management of the Community platform collaboration features; driving and managing new Community business and innovation programs; Community network revenue-generating activities; and Community expansion in fast-growth and emerging markets such as Japan, China and Latin America. Marco joined SAP in December 2005.

Moderator: Sameer Patel.
Sameer Patel has more than a decade of experience managing initiatives for large organizations helping them define and execute sustainable programs that drive lead generation, business partner network optimization, sales and marketing operational effectiveness, innovation, customer acquisition and employee productivity via communication and collaboration constructs.
Organizations that he has had the privilege to work on strategic global initiatives with include Ingres, Sun Microsystems, KPMG, McKesson HBOC, WR WrigleyCo., The Sabre Group, Grupo Televisa (Mx), and Cardinal Health. Sameer writes about performance acceleration via social and collaborative constructs and technology at Pretzel Logic.

$30 at the door

Gourmet dinner and wines are included.