Panels

Open Innovation Panel

The Internet and related technologies give companies radical new ways to harvest the talents of innovators working outside corporate boundaries. Outsiders (consumers, partners) can bring in substantive insights and can shape new products and services. While traditionally the product development process has been closely guarded by organizations, companies are now beginning to realize the potential benefits (e.g., increased innovation, faster time to market) that opening this process can bring forth and are beginning to increasingly adopt this model (e.g., LEGO, Redhat). This panel discussion aims to provide an overview of the Open innovation phenomenon and how it is expected to evolve going forward. Specifically, we hope to address:

  • Perspectives on how and where the ‘open innovation’ model is being used across the industry and the benefits players are seeing from it
  • Key issues (e.g., governance mechanisms to facilitate effective operation, maintaining quality) players are facing or are expected to face as they increase adoption of this model
  • Expected evolution of this model over the next 10-15 years

Panelists

Cloud Computing: Impact on Businesses

Cloud computing realizes many architect's dream of the data centers of the future. It abstracts the hardware and software intricacies and allows on demand availability of services that can be billed as utilities. It has all the potential to disrupt the corporate data centers as we know today and introduce a new paradigm to computing where computing is delivered like electricity and other utilities.

But before this dream can be realized there lot of questions to be answered. Are today's Cloud services ready for prime time? How do I manage my Data Center hosted in Cloud? How do I secure my Data Center hosted in a Cloud? What are the underlying technologies on which a Cloud is built? What will promote corporate ITs to make a beeline to Cloud providers? How will corporate IT department move their Data Centers to a Cloud? These are the questions that the panelist will wrestle with.

Panelists

Venture Capital: Funding in the Eye of the Storm

The recent financial crisis, coupled with a looming recession, has seized up the credit markets. How has this affected venture capital funding? What strategies are currently being used to secure funding and how will that change going forward? What are the implications for businesses trying to raise funds? Has the current economic environment created opportunities? What will be the future consequences on technological innovation? This panel will explore these questions and more.

Panelists

Startup Panel: Young Entrepreneurs (Sponsored by Wharton Entrepreneurial Programs)

"Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish" – Steve Jobs, Stanford Commencement in 2005.

Startups have been known to bring young, innovative leaders to the forefront. These hungry, foolish entrepreneurs gave us Google and Facebook. They fundamentally changed the way the world interacts with itself. But it was not without risks and came with an opportunity cost of a well-paying steady job. This panel is dedicated to young entrepreneurs. We will explore what motivated them to take the plunge, the challenges they faced and what kept them going. Our panelists discuss their experiences and answer questions for the innovators of tomorrow.

Panelists

Mobile Panel: The Future is in Mobility!

With this panel of mobile experts - representing carriers, manufacturers, content providers, and trend setters - we’ll be exploring several key questions in the mobile space.

  • Recently we’ve seen Apple’s eye-popping iPhone and Google’s open platform, Android, arrive on the scene: how are different platforms, both open and proprietary, changing mobile dynamics?
  • Around the world we’re seeing banking, social networks, gaming, along with many other activities, being designed for and supported in the mobile space... what may be some of the next “killer concepts” and why?
  • Networks are evolving, speeding up, and growing: what impact, unique challenges, or new opportunities may this have for the mobile space?
  • With more open platforms, increased demands from mobile users, and predicted volume growth, how will players in the mobile space (vendors, carriers, software creators, etc) be able to differentiate themselves?
  • As mobility is becoming ubiquitous, how may the market become more segmented or specifically targeted? Youth vs. Silver markets, Super-user market vs. “a return to simplicity” market, Poorer developing markets vs. wealthier, more developed markets, etc.

Panelists

Media Meets New Tech: The Challenges of Transformation (Sponsored by Comcast)

This panel will focus on some of the specific challenges media and technology companies are facing in the world of digital media. The qualities that make a great tech company are not the same qualities that make a great media company. Media and tech firms have very different cultures, very different interests, and are struggling to work together and adopt principles from the other side of the aisle. What are the challenges? How are they being addressed? And what's the right balance?

Panelists

The Future of Online Video Monetization

In the 1990s, interactive web pages became popular. The 2000s brought music sharing, iPods and the start of social networking. Today, with broadband penetration well past critical mass, video content is increasingly becoming disconnected from its branded source. As consumers create, share, edit and mobilize professional and consumer-generated content, they are now consuming tens of millions of video clips per day, and doing so in ways that are disruptive to the long-standing video content business models. This rapid growth has created new opportunities to engage audiences, but with it comes significant challenges to the companies attempting to create new monetization strategies in the space, while also not cannibalizing their existing models.

How does advertising best coexist with online video? What other models beyond advertising might work? Is there any way for creators and platforms to make money from user-generated content? What technologies are required to sustain the increased bandwidth of online video? Who are the thought leaders in the space and what strategies are they implementing today or in the future? These are but some of the questions that our panelists will discuss.

Panelists

Beyond Web 2.0 Panel: Evolution or Revolution? (Sponsored by Microsoft)

Four to five years ago, the internet witnessed a fundamental transformation: once a repository of company-generated information, the web became a platform for millions of individual users to create and share content. That new era marked the advent of social (Facebook, MySpace) and professional (Doostang, LinkedIn) networking, common good interfaces (Wikipedia, Yahoo! Answers), and innovative e-commerce practices (eBay, Amazon). In the last couple of months, there has been much discussion about the post-Web 2.0 era- Software as service, cloud computing, the intelligent/semantic web – such words have become synonymous with the forthcoming Web 3.0 stage. The purpose of this panel is to understand the technical and social possibilities associated with the third generation of the internet. How will social networks evolve and broaden their offerings? How will current players adapt their monetization model, finding new revenue channels beyond advertisement and subscription fees? How will firms leverage new opportunities and address upcoming challenges? Such questions will drive our discussion and help us shed light on the evolution – or perhaps the revolution – of tomorrow’s technology landscape.

Panelists

E-commerce Panel

US online retail sales reached $175 billion in 2007 and are projected to grow to $335 billion by 2012 (Forrester Research). The rise of product ratings, reviews and other forms of user-generated content has been one of the catalysts for this explosive growth. The “Social Web” has given consumers greater control over the buying process and has improved both buyer and seller accountability in the online marketplace.

This panel will discuss the impacts of user-generated content in E-commerce and provide insights to the following questions: Do ratings and reviews drive sales? Do they assist with merchandising decisions? Can and should consumers be influencers? How does user content-generated content fit into a company's overall marketing strategy? What other opportunities exist to leverage the social web and drive E-Commerce going forward?

Panelists