GLASTONBURY, Conn., June 20, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- TopCoder®, Inc., the leader in online programming competition, skills assessment and competitive software development, today announced the line up for the 2011 TopCoder Innovation Summit. "Innovation in the way the World Works" will feature Dean Kamen founder of FIRST and DEKA Research & Development Corp.; Nick Donofrio, former EVP Innovation and Technology and leader of IBM's technology strategy for innovation across IBM and its global ecosystem and Professor Karim Lakhani, leading academic authority from Harvard Business School on competition in open source software development and distributed innovation systems and unique product development strategies. The forum will provide unique insights to the way open and innovative work will be done in the future and what new skill sets will be required of both workers and management in order to maintain competitive advantage. It will also examine the new social ramifications these changes will bring as platforms which broker access to work and communities of professional, specialized workers become ubiquitous and the process instantaneous and global. This exclusive by invitation only conference takes place September 26-28 at the Westin Diplomat Resort & Spa in Hollywood, Fla.
(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20080820/NYW078LOGO)
About the Speakers
Dean Kamen
Dean Kamen is an inventor, an entrepreneur, and a tireless advocate for science and technology. His roles as inventor and advocate are intertwined — his own passion for technology and its practical uses has driven his personal determination to spread the word about technology's virtues and by so doing to change the culture of the United States.
As an inventor, he holds more than 440 U.S. and foreign patents, many of them for innovative medical devices that have expanded the frontiers of health care worldwide. While still a college undergraduate, he invented the first wearable infusion pump, which rapidly gained acceptance from such diverse medical specialties as chemotherapy, neonatology, and endocrinology. In 1976, he founded his first medical device company, AutoSyringe, Inc., to manufacture and market the pumps. At age 30, he sold that company to Baxter Healthcare Corporation. By then, he had added a number of other infusion devices, including the first wearable insulin pump for diabetics.
Following the sale of AutoSyringe, Inc., he founded DEKA Research & Development Corporation to develop internally generated inventions as well as to provide research and development for major corporate clients. Kamen led DEKA's development of the HomeChoice™ peritoneal dialysis system for Baxter International Inc. The HomeChoice™ system allows patients to be dialyzed in the privacy and comfort of their home and quickly became the worldwide market leader. Kamen also led the development of technology to improve slide preparation for the CYTYC (now Hologic Inc.) ThinPrep® Pap Test. Kamen-led DEKA teams have also developed critical components of the UVAR™ XTS™ System, an extracorporeal photophereisis device marketed by Therakos, a unit of Johnson & Johnson, for treatment of T-Cell lymphoma. An advanced prosthetic arm in development for DARPA should advance the quality of life for returning injured soldiers. Other notable developments include the Hydroflex™ surgical irrigation pump for C.R. Bard, the Crown™ stent, an improvement to the original Palmaz-Schatz stent, for Johnson & Johnson, the iBOT™ mobility device, and the Segway® Human Transporter.
Kamen has received many awards for his efforts. Notably, Kamen was awarded the National Medal of Technology in 2000. Presented by President Clinton, this award was in recognition for inventions that have advanced medical care worldwide, and for innovative and imaginative leadership in awakening America to the excitement of science and technology. Kamen was also awarded the Lemelson-MIT Prize in 2002, and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in May 2005.
In addition to DEKA, one of Dean's proudest accomplishments is founding FIRST® (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), an organization dedicated to motivating the next generation to understand, use and enjoy science and technology. Founded in 1989, this year FIRST will serve more than 250,000 young people, ages 6 to 18, in more than 50 countries around the globe. High-school-aged participants are eligible to apply for more than $14 million in scholarships from leading colleges, universities, and corporations. Studies have shown that FIRST alumni are highly motivated to pursue careers in science and engineering, thus fulfilling Dean's goal of inspiring the next generation of technological leaders.
Nicholas Donofrio
Nick Donofrio is a renowned global business leader who, in his 44-year career at IBM, helped lead the company to its position as a global technology and innovation leader. Donofrio was the leader of IBM's technology strategy and a champion for innovation across IBM and its global ecosystem. His responsibilities included IBM Research, the Personal Systems Group, the Integrated Supply Chain and Integrated Product Development teams, Governmental Programs, Environmental Health and Product Safety, Quality, and IBM's enterprise on-demand transformation team.
He also headed the IBM Technology Team, was a member of IBM's Strategy Team, and was chairman of the board of governors for the IBM Academy of Technology. At his retirement in 2008, Nick was IBM's Executive Vice President, Innovation and Technology.
Nick Donofrio is a Fellow of the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (U.K.), and a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He served on the U.S. Department of Education's Commission for the Future of Higher Education. Nick is a Director of both Delphi and MITRE corporations. He serves on several company boards, including The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and Liberty Mutual. He is a member of the U. S. Secretary of Energy's Advisory Board and the Prime Minister of Taiwan's Science and Technology External Advisory Board. He is also on the board of trustees for the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and is co-chair of the New York Hall of Science Board of Trustees. He holds a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a Master of Science degree in electrical engineering from Syracuse University, and he has been awarded honorary doctorates in engineering, sciences and technology.
Karim Lakhani
Karim R. Lakhani is an assistant professor in the Technology and Operations Management Unit at the Harvard Business School. He specializes in the management of technological innovation in firms and communities. His research is on distributed innovation systems and the movement of innovative activity to the edges of organizations and into communities. He has extensively studied the emergence of open source software communities and their unique innovation and product development strategies. He has also investigated how critical knowledge from outside of the organization can be accessed through innovation contests. He is the principal investigator and director of the Harvard-NASA Tournament Laboratory, which aims to systematize the use of innovation tournaments for the space agency.
Professor Lakhani's research on distributed innovation has been featured in publications like BusinessWeek, The Economist, Fast Company, Inc., The New York Times, The New York Academy of Sciences Magazine, Science, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and Wired. His research has been published in Harvard Business Review, Innovations, Management Science, Organization Science, Research Policy and the Sloan Management Review. He is the co-editor of Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software (MIT Press). He has also published teaching cases on leading organizations practicing distributed innovation including: Data.gov, InnoCentive, Google, Myelin Repair Foundation, SAP, Threadless, TopCoder and Wikipedia.
Karim was awarded his Ph.D. in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2006. He also holds an MS degree in Technology and Policy from MIT (1999), and a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering and Management from McMaster University in Canada (1993). He was a recipient of the Aga Khan Foundation International Scholarship and a four year doctoral fellowship from Canada's Social Science and Humanities Research Council. Prior to coming to HBS he served as a Lecturer in the Technology, Innovation and Entrepreneurship group at MIT's Sloan School of Management.
About the TopCoder Innovation Summit
The 2011 TopCoder Open, a premier world-wide programming and designing competition, brings together the most elite minds for head-to-head competitions. All new, and parallel to this prestigious event is the exclusive, invitation only TopCoder Innovation Summit. As technology evolves at an uncompromising rate, leaders are continually forced to evaluate the effects of globalization on their companies, their customers, and society. Attendees hear from experts drawn from the worlds of business and academic research to learn how these trends are affecting the way the world works.
About TopCoder, Inc.
TopCoder is the world's largest competitive software development community with more than 295,000 developers representing over 200 countries. TopCoder hosts the largest and most comprehensive developer ratings and performance metrics available. The TopCoder community builds software for a wide-ranging client base through a competitive, rigorous, standards based methodology. This methodology results in a highly consistent set of software components allowing a software-as-parts approach to application development. TopCoder makes this large library of software components built through competition available to all of our clients. Utilizing a world-wide member base and this library, TopCoder seeks to lower the cost of software development while increasing both the speed at which applications can be developed and the quality of the ultimate application. For more information about sponsoring TopCoder events and utilizing TopCoder's software services and platforms, visit www.topcoder.com.
TopCoder is a registered trademark of TopCoder, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Jim McKeown
TopCoder, Inc.
860.633.5540
[email protected]
SOURCE TopCoder, Inc.
WANT YOUR COMPANY'S NEWS FEATURED ON PRNEWSWIRE.COM?
Newsrooms &
Influencers
Digital Media
Outlets
Journalists
Opted In
Share this article