Global Innovation Exchange 2007

Sirin Elci
Founder & Director, Technopolis Group

Sirin Elci is the founder and director of the Turkish office of Technopolis Group. Prior to working as a consultant, she worked for Siemens A.G. and the Technology Development Foundation of Turkey where she managed national innovation programs.

During her career, Sirin has provided advice and support to the World Bank in international and national projects, and a variety of agencies and organisations in Turkey and in the European Union. She also actively took part in a number of international and national networks and task forces on innovation including those of the Association for Technology Implementation of Europe (TAFTIE), and is the president of the Turkish Technology Management Association, a board member of the Turkish Innovation Association, a member of the International Association for Management of Technology (IAMOT), the International Society for Professional Innovation Management (ISPIM) and the Turkish National Innovation Initiative.

Sirin also carries out activities to raise awareness on and create a culture of innovation in Turkey, and her recent efforts yielded the integration of innovation in the national education curricula. She has spoken at national and international conferences, workshops and TV and radio programmes, and is frequently quoted by the press.

Soren Kaplan
Managing Principal, InnovationPoint
Former Manager, Business Strategy, Hewlett-Packard Company

Soren Kaplan's passion for innovation and business strategy is exemplified through his diverse experience – from managing Hewlett-Packard's internal strategy consulting group, to co-founding an enterprise collaboration software company, to consulting to start-ups and Fortune 1000 companies. Soren is a Founder of InnovationPoint where he works with leading companies in the areas of business strategy and innovation including Visa, JPMorgan Chase, Kimberly-Clark, Dial, Disney, Hewlett-Packard, Philips, Levi Strauss, Genentech, SK Telecom, and numerous others.

Prior to co-founding InnovationPoint, Soren started iCohere, an enterprise software company that provides web collaboration software for online communities and e-learning. Prior to founding iCohere, Soren served as Manager of Business Strategy Consulting at Hewlett-Packard Company in Palo Alto, CA, where he led an internal consulting group that assisted leadership teams across HP with strategic planning, product and service innovation, and new market discovery and development. Soren also led HP’s Process Innovation Lab, a business process R&D group focused on developing leading edge business processes and tools for strategic business development, innovation and organizational change management.

Soren has presented and lectured at numerous conferences and institutions, including the Creative Education Foundation, the American Society of Training & Development, Case Western Reserve University and the Harvard Business School. Quotes and articles from Soren have appeared in publications including Fast Company, Strategy & Leadership, the Journal of Creativity and Innovation Management, and the Journal of Strategic Change among others. He holds Master's and Ph.D. degrees in Organizational Psychology.

Steve LaMonte
Vice President, Innovation
Johnson & Johnson Healthcare Products
Division of McNeil - PPC, Inc.

Steve LaMonte is Vice President, Innovation for Johnson & Johnson Healthcare Products, Division of McNeil - PPC, Inc. in Morris Plains, New Jersey. He joined Pfizer Consumer Healthcare in May of 2004 and was Vice President of Northern Latin America and Integrated Growth Solutions ( USA leadership of : Professional Marketing & Sales, Marketing Services, Ethnic Marketing and Innovation).

Prior to joining J&J, Steve was Vice President and General Manager of Colgate Palmolive’s US Personal Care Business located in New York City, New York. Prior to Colgate, he played a key leadership role in building Schering Plough Healthcare Products, US OTC and Personal Care franchises, as Senior Vice President of the Consumer Healthcare Division. In that capacity he was responsible for the management of its Footcare (Dr. Scholls, Lotrimin, and Tinactin), Suncare (Coppertone and Bain de SoLeil), and OTC (Claritin switch, Afrin, Coricidin, A&D lotion, and Drixoral) business units. Previously he held management positions for other consumer packaged goods companies including Nestle and Unilever.

He graduated Summa Cum Laude from Manhattan College in New York City, and holds a BS in Marketing.

Non corporate affiliations have included: Executive Committee Board Member for the Consumer Healthcare Products Association, Member of the Management Committee for the Association of National Advertisers, Founding Partner and Board Member for the National Association of Chain Drug Stores Sun Safety Alliance, Advisory Board Member for the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Advance Team and Board Member for Health Power for Minorities.

A native of New York City, Mr. LaMonte currently resides in Basking Ridge, New Jersey with his wife Robin and their three children: Samantha, Michael and Alexander.

Oscar Motomura
President & Founder, Amana-Key Group
São Paulo, Brazil

Oscar Motomura is the founder and CEO of the Amana-Key Group, a center for excellence in management and a network of associates with global reach, based in São Paulo, Brazil. Amana-Key is a leader in the field of generating "knowledge products" in the area of management, strategy and leadership for executives in business, government, and non-governmental organizations.

More than 40,000 executives from all 27 states of Brazil and from abroad have participated in Amana-Key's advanced management education programs and reinvention retreats.

Amana-Key's purpose is to serve as a world-reference for radical innovation in management, capable of producing genuine evolution in people, organizations, communities, and the greater whole. Amana-Key is an organization dedicated to serving the common good.

Mr. Motomura started his career in Brazil in a large, multinational financial institution, where he reached a senior management position at the age of 26. He founded his own company at 28, which was the starting point for what is now Amana-Key. Motomura is known in Brazil as one the most creative specialists in the area of strategy. He holds degrees in business administration and social psychology.

Cheryl Perkins
Former Chief Innovation Officer, Kimberly Clark
Founder, InnovationEdge

Cheryl Perkins is a thought leader in innovation and a creative catalyst in brand-building initiatives that contribute to rewarding consumer experiences and improved business performance. She was identified as one of the Top 25 Champions of Innovation by Business Week magazine in June 2006, and named as a top executive driving vision within the consumer goods industry (Visionaries 2006) by Consumer Goods Technology magazine.

Cheryl has over 23 years experience directing growth and innovation and most recently served as the Senior Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer for Kimberly-Clark Corporation, reporting to the CEO and Chairman of the Board. In this role she provided leadership to global teams, and oversaw the development of new strategic business opportunities that delivered competitive advantage across key business platforms in mature and emerging markets.

Cheryl led teams who developed technologies, partnerships, and intellectual assets to identify and transform insights, designs, technologies and capabilities into total solutions and new-to-the-world innovations. She serves on the Board of the Product Development Management Association (PDMA) and the Consumer Goods Research Advisory Board. She is also on the Board of Directors of the Governor’s Wisconsin Technology Council and the Georgia Institute of Technology External Advisory Board.

Marianne Toftegaard Poulsen
Executive Director, Innovation Center Denmark

Innovation Center Denmark (ICDK) in Silicon Valley is a tangible part of the Danish Government’s new Globalisation Strategy. A number of bridgeheads will be established in technological hot-spots around the world with the objective to help Danish companies and Universities tap into the global value chain.

ICDK opened June 1, 2006 and one of the focus areas is Clean Tech due to California’s aggressive target for CO2 reduction and the huge interest from the VC community for innovative solutions to replace fossil fuels. Other target areas are ICT and Life Sciences. Innovation Center Denmark Silicon Valley is the first of its kind. Marianne was charged with creating the business model and creating proof of concept. The results have led to the decision to start two additional Innovation Centers. Shanghai opens September 2007 and Munich in Q1 2008.

Prior to moving to Palo Alto, California Marianne was a consultant specializing in change management through customer focus. She was on the founding team of the first private GSM company in Denmark, serving as VP of Corporate Relations. She spent 3 years in Brussels as a lobbyist, worked as a Marketing Director for an engineering firm and was a McKinsey consultant. Marianne holds a Bachelor from the Aarhus Business School and an MBA from University of Houston.

Anil K. Rathi
President & Founder, Idea Crossing, Inc.

In 2002, Anil founded Idea Crossing with the vision of facilitating innovation in the global marketplace. Together with a small team, Anil created the Innovation Challenge®, the world’s largest MBA innovation competition. In just four years, the annual competition has grown to over 400 teams from the top 100 MBA programs worldwide. The Innovation Challenge has attracted global brands such as Hilton Hotels, American Express, IBM, Harley-Davidson, GE, Whirlpool, Shell, Chrysler, Lexmark to name a few.

Idea Crossing coined the term crowdcasting, an emergent innovation process which broadcasts crucial strategic challenges to a specific and carefully chosen group. The company specializes in the design, production and operation of innovation competitions. Since the inception of Idea Crossing, Anil and his team has run over a dozen successful innovation competitions and has been featured in Business 2.0, Inc. Magazine, Chicago Tribune, Continental Airlines magazine and soon to be a guest on the topic of innovation for a new show for networked executives launching this fall on CNET.com.

Prior to starting Idea Crossing, he worked for Omron Software Technology Group and with several Internet start-up companies. Anil graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a BBA in Marketing and received his MBA in International Management from Thunderbird-School of Global Management

Ishwari Store
Founding Partner, Leapfrog Strategy Consulting

Ishwari is a founding partner of Leapfrog Strategy Consulting – a marketing and brand Strategy consultancy with operations in India and the US that applies unique consumer frameworks that catalyse fresh, robust solutions to a range of challenges marketers face in branding, managing innovation and applying foresight.

Prior to co-founding Leapfrog Strategy Consulting, Ishwari spent 10 years in Consumer marketing – first with Ciba Geigy & then with Colgate Palmolive (India and Malaysia) She then went on to become Associate Vice President , strategic planning at JWT India – where she led and shaped brand/business direction on a number of JWT’s leading clients – namely Unilever, Phillips, Debeers, Mattel etc.

A whole-brain thinker, Ishwari combined a great head for business with an instinctive understanding of consumers and creative thinking to help build robust and imaginative strategies that propelled extraordinary growth for her set of clients. Ishwari is an MBA form an Ivy League Indian Management School.