IntroductionI had the opportunity to attend the Brightidea Innovation Leaders “Birds of a Feather” Conference. The event was a peer-to-peer discussion on innovation management among innovation executives and managers at top global corporations. The conference provided a forum to exchange ideas and best practices on implementing innovation in large organizations, and there were presentations by WMS and Mentor Graphics. This is the first of a series of two articles highlighting the key takeaways from the two presentations, based on the notes I took at the event.The WMS presentation was given by Shridhar Joshi, VP, Global Product Strategy, and Al Thomas, Executive Director, Advanced Game R&D.WMS has sprung forth from the loins of Williams Bally Midway combination and its heritage of pinball machines to become the dominant player in the video slot machine business.WMS leadership set innovation as a core principal in an attempt to establish a culture of innovation. They … Continue reading →

I had the opportunity to experience a conference today using Cisco’s TelePresence to connect four locations (New York, New Jersey, Seattle, and Silicon Valley) and Cisco’s WebEx to connect scores more people on the internet. It was supposed to be five physical locations, but London got ten inches of snow overnight and so they did not join.The conference ran for five hours and I must say that the high definition video ran flawlessly, and there were only minor glitches in getting people’s computers synched up with the projector. The system seamlessly switched amongst the four locations on our three flat panels, based on who was talking, and the sound was crystal clear.Not bad for $300,000 (for the 3-screen Cisco TelePresence 3000). I’m sure it will get cheaper over time, but I can only imagine that there must be renewed interest with the reduced travel budgets at most companies today.It is … Continue reading →