An academic workshop, on the discovery part (aka front end or predevelopment portion) of the innovation process will be held in Munich, Germany, on the morning of Thursday January 25th, 2007. The workshop is jointly sponsored by both IIR and PDMA. Featured speakers will include:

• John Bessant, Professor of Innovation and Technology Management and Senior Fellow, (UK) Advanced Institute of Management Research, who will speak on “Using design prototyping methods to enable co-evolution of new products and services in complex environments.”
• Joachim Henkel, Schöller Chair in Technology and Innovation Management, Technische Universität München who will speak on “The Technology-Push Lead User Method: A new tool for opportunity identification.”
• Cornelius Herstatt, Technical University of Hamburg, Institute of Technology and Innovation Management who will speak on “How to use analogies to develop breakthrough innovations?”
• Eric von Hippel, Professor of Innovation Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Author of Democratizing Innovation who will speak on “How new products migrate from lead user-innovators to manufacturers”
• Wim Vanhaverbeke, Eindhoven University of Technology (The Netherlands) & Hasselt University (Belgium) who will speak on the latest “Academic Research in Open Innovation.”

The workshop is being held at the conclusion of a practitioner conference on the front end. The academic rate for this conference is 200 Euro.

Additional information on the conference may be found at http://www.iirusa.com/feieurope/14083.xml.