In its most adventurous, interconnected and interactive incarnation yet, the 4th SA Innovation Summit staged from August 30 to September 1 in Sandton, aims to jolt participants off their well-worn mental tracks and on to more fruitful and creative paths to stimulate innovation in SA.
Leading the process under the theme ‘Innovation Legends — Ideas to Market’, will be a line-up of 56 of the most exciting and successful innovators and innovation specialists in business, government and academia from South Africa, Africa and beyond.
The event is hosted by the IDC, a leading partner in the Innovation Summit with its Support Programme for Industrial Innovation (SPII). The IDC said it was confident this year’s summit would provide “a significant launching ground for many iconic projects”.
A major focus of the 2011 Innovation Summit is the stimulation of local creativity and the transformation of new ideas into commercially-viable, socially-useful products and services. Among those sharing their experiences of bringing ideas to market will be one of SA’s most well know innovation legends, Sasol.
‘Innovation is at the core of Sasol’s business. As the business has expanded across the globe, this spirit of innovation continues to thrive, which is echoed in the enterprise development arm of Sasol, namely ChemCity.’
The global trend towards collaborative or open innovation is a hot topic which will be explored by top practitioners in the field.
Skip Davis, Vice President of open innovation consultants NineSigma is talking on “Harnessing the wisdom of the crowd “while creative strategist Tim Malone will make the argument for organization-wide creative collaboration.
Industrial heavyweights Sasol ChemCity and Anglo will both be presenting innovation case studies.
Legends from the private sector include Head of FNB Innovators Paul Steenkamp, Verimark founder Willie Van Straaten, Brian Steinhobel of the Steinhobel Group and William Gwata, the Zimbabwean scientist, accountant and inventor of a hugely-successful automatic pap-cooker.
The CSIR is showcasing some of South Africa’s most exciting and successful innovations and shares lessons learnt. Insight into the creation of entrepreneurs is shared by the Nigerian-born TV presenter and businesswoman, Moky Makura, author of “The secrets of entrepreneurs”, and Allon Raiz, radio and TV personality and CEO of Raizcorp, dedicated to incubating small businesses in Africa.
This years’ summit will examine the possibilities offered by the latest technology, from social networking to biomimcry to the prospects of quantum computing which will be explained by theoretical physicist Prof Francesco Petruccione.
In line with the Innovation Summit’s commitment to indigenous creativity and eco-friendly products, each delegate will receive a bag filled with the fruits of local innovation from Sasol ChemCity as well as exquisite hand-made felt slippers produced by FLOCK, women in the dusty dorp of Petrusville.
Anglo Platinum described its involvement as ‘an ideal opportunity to communicate with innovators and the innovation community’, and to stimulate the development of commercially-viable technology Anglo’s new development fund is offering a R300,000 prize for the most promising new application for platinum group metals.
The Innovation Summit also depends on a number of other committed supporters, namely Technology Innovation Agency, DBSA, Novixo, Mail & Guardian, SAB Foundation, Lemnis Lighting, Vodacom, Management Today, itnewsAfrica.com, BMGI, and Soul Providers.
The Innovation Summit, jointly owned and organised by Itha Taljaard, CEO of Sense2Solve and Dr. Audrey Verhaeghe, CEO of the Research Institute for Innovation and Sustainability (RIIS), said this year’s event takes innovation capability building to new heights in South Africa.
We aim to unlock the innovation potential which sits within the multi-helix: government, business, academia and communities and jump a few places on the global innovation index.
For more information or to register, visit www.innovationsummit.co.za
Follow the event live on twitter @SA_innovate
For information about the global innovation index, visit www.globalinnovationindex.org
This article originally appeared in the Mail & Guardian newspaper as an advertorial supplement