Conference Promotes Design As A Key To Business Growth
Released: August 18, 2004
The increased role of product design in creating a competitive advantage for companies will be the subject of an Oct. 1-2 conference of the Wisconsin Innovation Service Center (WISC) called “Ideas to Profits: Learning from Innovative Leaders.”
WISC has a national reputation for helping companies, entrepreneurs, and inventors make smart product and marketing decisions. Again this year’s conference features a special track for manufacturers wanting to embrace innovation.
Milissa Rick, program director of WISC at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, said that innovation provides a competitive advantage. Many times this makes the innovative manufacturers more profitable than their counterparts in today’s marketplace.
“The conference is designed to be a resource for product innovation to assist entrepreneurs and inventors in increasing their odds of success,” she said. “Attendees walk away with the curriculum for developing new products and exposure to the individuals who specialize in various stages of product development.”
Innovative thinking has helped revive products and companies like the iPod from Apple Computer Inc., Volkswagen’s New Beetle, and the Santiago Calatrava addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum. The imaginative design of Calatrava’s movable wing-like structure on the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Burke Brise Soleil, has helped bring in more than 500,000 visitors annually, significantly increasing their overall operating and program spending.
The conference, at the Hamilton Center of the UW-Whitewater University Center, will feature 19 workshops from patent lawyers, company CEOs, business development specialists and marketing experts. Workshops will include how to assess the market for new products, create competitive advantages with the right intellectual property protection, design and test affordable prototypes, uncover growth financing opportunities, create awareness for new products, target potential partners, and understanding commercialization options.
This year’s keynote speaker, Karen Field, chief editor of Design News, a magazine that focuses on engineering projects and new technologies, will speak on the importance of design and using design as a key to competitive advantage. Other notable speakers include Cameron Adams of JohnsonDiversey; Keith Keller and Greg Michael, both of J.J. Keller and Associates, Inc.; Jamie Ratajczek of Kolpin Outdoors, Inc.; and Dr. Harry Burrell of Lucigen Corporation.
Conference sponsors include: DeWitt, Ross & Stevens S.C., Von Briesen & Roper S.C., Boyle, Fredrickson, Newholm, Stein, & Gratz S.C., Telaric Alliance, United States Patent Services, Wisconsin Department of Commerce, Facilitator Capital Fund, Lab Safety Supply, Wisconsin Technology Council, Center for Technology Transfer, and WiSys Technology Foundation. Several private companies have made donations towards scholarships for students interested in new product development, engineering, or entrepreneurship and would like to attend the conference.
WISC, founded at UW-Whitewater in 1980, is a national service that provides research support in new product assessments, competitive intelligence searches, current/potential distributor and customer assessments, and licensing/strategic partner searches. It has investigated more than 6,300 product and market opportunities for private clients and companies.
- Jon Minnick ,minnickjf01@uww.edu
