Carnegie Mellon Prof Talks about "Managing Creativity" at Microsoft Campus.

As part of my first activities as a new alumni and Boardmember in the Seattle Chapter of the Tepper School of Business at CMU - I am helping organize a talk at Microsoft Redmond Campus open for All Tepper Alums, CMU alums, Microsoft FTEs and their guests.

Interested parties should register here -  registration Fee: US$10 only.

Please print out this invite for helping us let you in

The Seattle Alumni Chapter of the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University

Proudly presents

Dr. Peter Boatwright

on

"Managing Creativity to Achieve Pragmatic Innovation"

Associate Professor of Marketing at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon and co-author of

"The Design of Things to Come: How Ordinary People Create Extraordinary Products"

Thursday, September 15, 2005.

Networking: 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm

Talk: 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Building #34, Quinalt Room

Refreshments will be served.

Product developers have worked for decades under a mantra of total quality management, quality is increasingly a commodity; everyone can get it. And costs have been cut about as much as they can be.

The next opportunity for a competitive edge is to be found in creating products that are more innovative than those of the competition. The most important issue then is a) how to produce innovation, b) how to repeatedly generate innovative products.

A necessary first step is to understand successful innovation from the marketplace point of view. Innovation is not about new technology but about meeting people’s desires, about fulfilling their fantasies. Rather than a leap in functional capability, innovation provides a leap in consumer value. (Consider the iPod. When developed, it was a minor technological advance but a major leap in consumer value.)

So, how does one innovate?

Innovation is not wizardry or luck, but innovation is the flower of diligent work — work that uncovers the potential that a product can achieve for its users, producing comprehensive solutions that consumers respond to emotionally, cognitively, and then economically.

Since it is work, it can be accomplished with procedures, tasks, and tools. Since it is work, it is teachable. This content is the subject of Dr, Peter Boatwright’s teaching, work, book and this talk.

Peter Boatwright, Ph.D.

, is Associate Professor of Marketing at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University. He is an author of the new book, "The Design of Things to Come: How Ordinary People Create Extraordinary Products," (co-authored with Jonathan Cagan and Craig M. Vogel). In The Design of Things to Come, he discusses not only the importance of innovation to profits but also processes and tools that innovative companies use to achieve their success. Prof. Boatwright has worked with a diverse range of product companies in the fields of electronics, telephony, packaged goods, B2B durables, and medical devices. Prof. Boatwright has both developed new statistical methods as well as additional theories of consumer behavior, spanning qualitative and quantitative methodologies. His expertise and teaching focuses on innovation, new product marketing, and marketing research methods.