Overview: What do Toyota, Boeing, Google, Merck, and P&G have in common? They all use various forms of open innovation and crowdsourcing to achieve incredible returns on investment and lead their markets. Open innovation is a new term that describes the process of gathering groups of people together and using their spare time and untapped knowledge to create something of value. Leading companies use open innovation not only to outpace their competition, but also render them irrelevant, now you can learn these skills from leaders in the industry and put them to use in your business. Please join us for a presentation and panel discussion with four of the leading personalities in this exciting new business segment: Speaker Panel: Tim Gilchrist, Co-Founder of Microengagement, One of the first companies to use open strategies in product development and management consulting. Clients include ING Bank, Kiwi Publishing, and Yale University. www.microengagement.com David Perry, President of Consensus Point, a decision market company that helps organizations predict the outcomes of issues of interest (e.g., sales forecasts, new product success) by using the collective wisdom of company employees. Clients include: P&G and BestBuy. www.consensuspoint.com Michael Morris, Senior Vice President of TopCoder, a leading software company that utilizes a massive community of over 180,000 highly skilled programmers and developers to compete and execute projects for AOL, ESPN, VeriSign and many other Fortune 500 companies. The TopCoder competition model and methodology was recently profiled in the new book Crowdsourcing by Jeff Howe of Wired Magazine. www.topcoder.com Kim Patrick Kobza, CEO of Neighborhood America, one of the first enterprise social networking companies. Neighborhood Americas technology powers the 'open innovation' networks behind many major brands including: HGTV, Adidas, and Kodak. www.neighborhoodamerica.com