About ISPIM

ISPIM - International Society for Professional Innovation Management is a network of researchers, industrialists, consultants and public bodies who share an interest in innovation management. Formed in 1983 by Professor Knut Holt in Norway, ISPIM has around 500 full members and 2500 associates from 100+ countries worldwide and is the oldest, largest and most active innovation association in Europe. Our Annual Conference, held in Europe every June, now regularly attracts over 500 delegates and we have run a series of smaller events outside of Europe since 2008. Other ISPIM activities include development of a PhD Community, Special Interest Groups on a series of innovation related topics, articles and video interviews and a number of awards including the prestigious ISPIM-Wiley PhD Dissertation Award and journal publications.

ISPIM Asia-Pacific

ISPIM Asia Pacific is being formed with the backdrop that Asia has close to four billion people all aspiring to lead a life that rivals in quality and standard that of developed economies – a compelling market opportunity that even the most conservative of board rooms cannot gloss over. Asia offers hundreds of millions of highly trained scientists and engineers which is several times more than all the engineers and scientists available to the developed economies. Many Asian countries have a majority of their population under thirty which can be translated into new market opportunities for existing and future innovative products and services. Some large corporations have found it worth their while to move significant portions of their R&D and innovation efforts into different Asian countries to leverage this large emerging market. A number of early innovation attempts were focused on adapting existing innovations created for the developed economies into lower cost offering for the Asian markets. Some of them worked and others did not. There is an increasing realization that innovations for the four billion people will require asking framework-breaking questions and creating a new breed of innovations that can be adopted even for the developed economies.
Recognizing this growth potential in Asia-Pacific, and lack of a dedicated innovation community, ISPIM has created an innovation event specifically for the region to be held each year in December. The main objective of this event is to bring together researchers, executives, thought leaders, policy leaders and other people with a shared interest in innovation management to focus on topical innovation issues in the Asia-Pacific region. A longer term goal is to establish and support an active ISPIM Innovation Community in Asia-Pacific and to significantly increase the number of ISPIM members from this region.

ISPIM Asia-Pacific 2014

Singapore has been a leader in innovation inputs in the Asian region and is seriously supporting the creation of an extensive innovation and entrepreneurship infrastructure. The government has set aside several hundreds of millions of dollars to foster innovation and productivity given that they view these two as the twin engines for growth. It is therefore very appropriate that the new ISPIM Asia Pacific conference is launched in Singapore in December 2014.
Hosted by Singapore Management University, and supported by Singapore Tourism Board, the ISPIM Asia-Pacific Conference will take place on 7-10 December 2014. The programme will tackle Singapore and the region’s key innovation issues by attracting top-level speakers from Singapore and the region from academia, industry and government.

The 3.5 day event will include:
- Multi-track sessions that mix academia, science, industry and government
- Dedicated sessions and communities on innovation challenges for innovation in business and government
- Showcases on Innovation Success in Singapore with presentations, discussion panels and site visits
- Networking events: welcome reception (Sunday); gala dinner (Monday); informal social evening (Tuesday)