Those of us who chose to keep the energy going for cocktail hour after a full day at the Back End of Innovation Conference at the Santa Clara Hyatt Regency (#BEI13) headed out to the chilly Terra Courtyard to hear Vivek Wadhwa speak on Women in Innovation. Wadhwa is an entrepreneur, lecturer, and writer who is currently Vice President of Research and Innovation at NASA's Singularity University, and Fellow at Stanford University, among his other roles. Add to these accomplishments author of the upcoming book Women in Innovation.
'One of the technology industry's most serious shortcomings is that it leaves out
women and some minorities. I have written a lot about the dearth of women and why this is an important issue. I am also crowdcreating a book, Innovating Women, on how to fix this imbalance. In a nutshell, we need to do this for the economy and to boost innovation.'
Ivy Eisenberg is founder of Our IdeaWorks, an Innovation and Lean Customer Research' consultancy that helps companies connect to customers and other stakeholders to discover business opportunities, accelerate growth, and build and deliver successful products and services. Ivy has more than 25 years of experience in the Front End of Innovation, user interaction design, and software product and project management. She has worked in healthcare, financial services, B2B, consumer goods, and telecommunications sectors. Ivy is also an award-winning humor writer and storyteller, with an MBA in Marketing, Entrepreneurship and Innovation from NYU's Stern School of Business.