Prof. Marko Torkkeli (Lappeenranta University of Technology)

Dr. Marko Torkkeli is the Professor of Technology and Business Innovations at the Lappeenranta University of Technology in Kouvola, Finland. His research interests focus on technology and innovation management, strategic entrepreneurship, and decision support systems. He is a Visiting Researcher at INESC Porto (Portugal), a Docent of Technology-based Business at University of Jyväskylä (Finland) and a Docent of Technology and Innovation Management at Helsinki University of Technology (Finland). He serves as the Vice President of Publications for the International Society for Professional Innovation Management (ISPIM). 

Prof. dr. Wim Vanhaverbeke (Hasselt University & Eindhoven University of Technology)

Wim is a Professor Strategy at the Limburg University Center (Belgium) in the Department of Business Studies and a research fellow at the Eindhoven Center for Innovation Studies of the Eindhoven University of Technology (The Netherlands). Current research areas are: social capital, and external acquisitions of technological capabilities; alliance management; new business development and corporate venturing; and organizational transformations and learning. Wim is also a co-editor (with Henry Chesbrough and Joel West) of "Open  Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm", a new book about the research challenges related to Open Innovation. The book will be published by Oxford University Press in July 2006. Currently, Wim is developing a proposal for a new management book about "Open Innovation in Europe".

Prof. dr. Henry Chesbrough (University of Berkeley, Haas Business School)

His unique background as both a practitioner and a researcher has made Henry Chesbrough one of the most innovative and respected authorities on how to get ideas to market. In his book Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology, Henry defines the trends that are restructuring r&d worldwide and he proposes new approaches to innovation strategy. Henry Chesbrough is a professor at UC Berkeley’s Haas Business School, where he teaches and runs a center on managing innovation and the management of technology and researches in the areas of managing innovation, corporate venture capital, spin-offs, and managing intellectual property. His book Open Innovation describes a trend that is reshaping how organizations structure innovation processes: an accelerating shift from a “closed” innovation model, in which research and development is vertically integrated within organizations, to an “open model” in which firms learn to use ideas wherever they find them in a flexible business model that’s open to a broad range of arrangements. Chesbrough’s comprehensive approach focuses on both the internal factors and the external trends that shape a company’s innovation success. Open innovation leverages the knowledge available outside the organization to the company’s advantage, as venture capitalists do. It also opens up the barriers that usually keep innovations developed internally from benefiting other business units in the company and it encourages companies to develop new ways to share ideas externally for profit.