FEI25: Day 1Monday, 19 May 2025 - ET (Eastern Time, GMT-05:00)

We’re leaving a bit of breathing room in the agenda to ensure that late-breaking sessions can be placed. Please contact elizabeth.hinkis@informa.com or check back for session details.

Learn our structured process for driving purposeful innovation in today’s era. Create impactful products that meet customer needs and align with your brand strategy.

What you'll learn:

1. Customer-Centric Innovation: Discover customer-centric innovations that improve daily life. Learn from case studies highlighting audience insights’ role in creating successful products.
2. Strategic Alignment: Discover the value of aligning innovations with brand identity. Learn to expand strategic brand frames for new opportunities while preserving core essence.
3. Market Viability: Learn to evaluate category success potential to prioritize innovation efforts toward areas with maximum opportunity.
4. Collaborative Ideation: Engage in our co-creation method merging teams and customers. Join Bounce-and-Build® sessions for creativity and collaboration.
5. Validation and Activation: Learn real-world concept validation and activation strategies, including brand identity and go-to-market techniques.

Innovation executives are under enormous pressure to deliver on AI initiatives for their companies and integrate AI into their day-to-day practices. AI evangelists claim that it's a magic bullet that will save time, improve outcomes, and enable deeper understanding of innovation processes, but is AI too good to be true? With the technology moving so quickly, it's hard for leaders to sort through the hype and understand what's real. This talk digs into the risks, opportunities, and pitfalls of using AI in innovation processes, uses the Lux AI Application Selection Framework to identify the most impactful use of AI in innovation, and builds a roadmap for innovation leaders to begin their implementation journey.

In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, managing large-scale crowdsourcing initiatives can quickly become overwhelming.

In this session, hear how one organization transformed a complex, resource-intensive crowdsourcing process into an efficient, scalable service by partnering with a trusted external expert. Learn how this strategic collaboration accelerated delivery, improved quality, and freed up internal teams to focus on innovation.

If you’re looking to turn your crowdsourcing challenges into streamlined successes, this is the session for you.

No two innovation pipelines look the same—especially at the front end, where ambiguity thrives and the rules are still being written. So how can Technology and AI make a real impact where it matters most? Join Erica Norton, insights leader at The Hershey Company, for an energizing fireside chat on how AI is transforming different types of early-stage innovation—from product development to category creation and beyond. Packed with real-world examples and actionable insights, this session will help you spot high-impact use cases and rethink what's possible at the front end of your innovation process.

Expand your network of innovation experts and corporate changemakers through quick 1:1 starter meetings.

Rapidly explore each other’s abilities and continue the conversation during the next break, cocktail or meal.

Building a world-class incubation program locally and globally, using a VC-like approach and leveraging AI at every step to deliver Proof of Value in a 3-month timeframe.

Expand your network of innovation experts and corporate changemakers through quick 1:1 starter meetings.

Rapidly explore each other’s abilities and continue the conversation during the next break, cocktail or meal.