Organisations across a variety of industries are increasingly recognising the value of open innovation, allowing companies to continually improve their innovation success and growth potential.
The second Global Business Innovation Conversation for 2019 featured Swarovski's Strategic Director of Innovation Ecosystems, Hannes Erler, along with other industry innovators in the Australian business landscape.
Globally known for his specialised knowledge in innovation management, Hannes discussed how the billion-dollar company leveraged innovation ecosystems to pursue ground-breaking opportunities. He also shared insights on how the 125-year-old jewellery and crystal juggernaut used open innovation to become an award-winning innovation pioneer.
A panel of industry experts discussed:
How to create and capture value from collaborative activities for game-changing innovations
What it takes to implement open innovation by Australian companies
How companies develop, facilitate, and manage open innovation and digital transformation
How to build innovation capabilities and cross-industry R&D partnerships with universities, start-ups and other stakeholders
Hannes Erler
Strategic Director of Innovation ecosystems
Swarovski, Wattens, Austria
Justyna Dabrowska
Vice-Chancellor's Postdoctoral Research Fellow
RMIT University
Keynote
Hannes is an international keynote speaker with special knowledge in central subjects of innovation management, especially in earlier phases of innovation processes. He specialises in open innovation with a focus on inter-organisational collaboration and strategic alliances.
He connects Science and Business Ecosystems within the new model of “Innovation Ecosystem Logics” with a special focus on disruptive innovation and the implementation of start-up logics within corporate environments.
Invited to talk at over 40 conferences and innovation events in recent years on an international level, Hannes also won the "Best Open Innovation Award 2015" from Zeppelin University Friedrichshafen in the Category “Open Innovation Networks”.
Moderator
Justyna holds a PhD in Industrial Engineering and Management from LUT University, Finland. She has extensive experience in managing large international collaborative projects on open innovation, education and business acceleration.
During her PhD endeavour, she was a project manager of OI-Net (www.oi-net.eu), a large pan-European initiative on open innovation that gathers over 50 partners (academia, industry, consulting) from more than 30 countries.
Panellists
Bernard Lee
Portfolio Strategy & Innovation
Australia Post
An experienced corporate innovation specialist that has built lean startup capability within a large organization. Bernard’s role is to keep abreast of changing technology and commercial trends to defend or take advantage of these opportunities for Australia Post through proof of concepts, incubated businesses and strategic venturing and partnering.
Prior to joining the innovation team, Bernard was in Corporate Strategy at Australia Post after a number of years in management consulting across aviation, transport and retail industries.
Kelly Hutchinson
Founder, DSI4AU and Deputy Chair
Pearcey Foundation
Kelly is an international expert on innovation and impact at the intersection of tech and social. Kelly harnesses the power of technology successfully blending business and social missions.
Her focus is on enabling digital social innovation in Australia and emerging markets where technology becomes a key driver of economic growth. Providing opportunities for new models of business to bring benefits to communities at the grassroots level.
Kelly’s speciality is creating partnerships between institutions such as government and business, individuals and entrepreneurs to drive true collaboration. Kelly has put into practice new models of innovation and change across sectors and welcomes a challenge.
Matthew Young
Manufacturing Innovation Manager
Innovative Manufacturing Cooperative Research Centre (IMCRC)
The Innovative Manufacturing Cooperative Research Centre (IMCRC) is an organisation helping to catalyse the transformation of Australian manufacturing. Matthew is keenly interested in developing collaboration and open networks for manufacturing and technology innovation in Australia to enable the transformation of Australian industry to embrace the full potential of industry 4.0.
Matthew has extensive Industry and research experience that stretch over 28 years including serving as Chief Engineer for Materials and Process Technology at Jiangsu Hengshen Co. Ltd., China’s largest vertically integrated carbon fibre composites materials manufacturer, technical and leadership roles over with Boeing Aerostructures Australia, Research Lead at CRC for Advanced Composite Structures and Senior Industry Research Fellow at Monash.
Peter Carney
Head of Innovation and Product Development
TOLL Global Logistics
With over 30 years’ experience working across various industries including resources, manufacturing, consulting and transport, Peter has a wealth of experience in the supply chain and logistics field.
He has been instrumental in achieving significant value creation and cost savings across a wide range of projects for some of Australia’s largest Mining and Industrial organisations.
Peter has strong interest in creating value through the application of ICT technologies to business problems. The rapid evolution of these technologies continues to create significant opportunities for businesses capable of adapting.
