Mentor Forum Italy - Milan, November 6 2012

Keynote: Organizing by Design

Keynote Winning products are rarely the result of optimizing only one aspect of a design. Innovators generate success because they find ways to cross organizational and functional boundaries to optimize a product in multiple disciplines. Mature companies try to solve this problem by creating cross-disciplinary teams while start-up companies do it naturally due to lack of enough resources to allow specialization. Meanwhile, products targeted at customers in different disciplines rarely appeal to more than one. Dr. Rhines has compiled data on cross-disciplinary product successes including attempts by companies to create products for hardware/software co-design, mechanical/electrical design integration and many more. He has identified successes and categorized the ways that companies have (rarely) achieved multi-disciplinary product optimization. He will use these examples to generate some guidelines for companies of all sizes to achieve product development success.

Design and Process Innovation in Italy

Panel

Presenters
1. Pierantonio Palerma - Division Director, Il Sole 24 Ore BusinessMedia (Moderator)
2. Alfonso Fuggetta – CEO of Cefriel
3. Giovanni Sgalambro – VP Change Management and Group CIO – DATALOGIC Group
4. Alessandro Caleo - President EYE-TECH
5. Bruno Murari - Scientific Advisor of STMicroelectronics

Not withstanding the challenging financial climate, some fields are featured by a significant concentration of high-tech innovative activities in line with the diffused opinion that gives credit to Italian entrepreneurs’ creativity and inventiveness. Is commitment to innovation an undisputed catalyst to growth? This panel brings together different experiences and viewpoints of making innovation in high-tech sectors in Italy.