Talk: The Democratization of Innovation, A Conversation with Ray Kurzweil, October 14, 2009

Group Name	Enterprise Forum of Cambridge, MA
Event Name	Innovation Series October 2009
Event Description	Networking and Registration: 5:30 - 6:15 p.m. Program: 6:15 - 8:00 p.m. Post-Event Reception: 8:00-9:00 p.m.
Event Contact	Trish Fleming
Contact Phone	6172538240
Contact Email	trishf@mit.edu
Date	Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Time	6:00 PM until 9:00 PM
Address	MIT Stata Center Kirsch Auditorium, 32-123 32 Vassar Street Cambridge MA

Forum Members: $25
Non-Members: $40
MIT Staff (with valid ID): $25
Students from all universities are FREE with valid ID. Pre-registration encouraged.

REGISTER

Keynote presentation by one of the most prolific and diverse technology innovators followed by a deep conversation led by Sim Simeonov of FastIgnite

Impervious to the roller-coaster ride of the financial markets, the past decade has brought about an unprecedented acceleration in technology development and adoption combined with a rapid decline in the cost of anything touched by IT. Open-source, software-as-a-service, cloud computing, user-generated content, freemium and viral distribution models share one thing in common: they lower the cost of experimentation and make it cheaper and easier to create new things while at the same time destroying existing business models.

The democratization of innovation is a turbulent process. Rapid creation and violent destruction. Many winners and many losers, both big and small. Are there patterns of success in the chaos? Ray Kurzweil definitely thinks so. He has been on the bleeding edge of innovation for decades and his track record is something to admire. Ray was the principal developer of the first CCD flat-bed scanner, the first omni-font optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and the first commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition.

Following Ray’s keynote presentation, we will go deep with Ray on topics ranging from forecasting technology shifts and timing markets to practical techniques for fostering market-focused innovation to understanding the different roles of the individual entrepreneur vs. the team in venture creation. Iconic entrepreneur and angel investor Bill Warner, founder of Avid Technology, Wildfire Communications, and Warner Research will join the conversation.

Keynote:

Ray Kurzweil, prolific inventor, entrepreneur, author and futurist
Conversation with:
Bill Warner, serial entrepreneur and investor
Moderator:
Simeon Simeonov, serial entrepreneur and investor

Program Organizers: David E. Brook, Hamilton, Brook, Smith & Reynolds, P.C., Kristen Collins, KMC Partners, Pearl Freier, Cambridge BioPartners, Simeon Simeonov, FastIgnite, Inc