Innovation Engineering Leadership Institutes

This Wednesday will mark the beginning of our first Innovation Engineering Leadership Institute for Maine business executives to learn how to lead innovation in their companies. The institutes will be taught by Doug Hall, author, radio show host, and founder of Eureka! Ranch, which works with major corporations to develop new products and services.

The program is in many ways a condensed version of the Innovation Engineering minor we offer at the University of Maine that Doug has helped us to develop. Participants will learn systems for creating, communicating and commercializing ideas for profitable growth.

When Doug was teaching at UMaine this fall, we traveled the state as he spoke at various business functions, and we encountered businesspeople who believe that they can't do innovation. They don't have the confidence that they can lead it, their people can do it, or that their customers want it. The fact is, innovation - new products, services, customers and markets - is the only good way to profitable growth. And, with a systematic approach that drives out risk, companies can do it.

After the January session, we will host sessions in February and March. The February session has just a handful of spots left, and the March session is sold out, even after we expanded the number of slots available. Let us know if you are interested, so that we can look to holding an additional session in the coming months.

For more information, click here.

Happy New Year!

I hope to do more regular postings this year to pass along the great articles that I have read, to introduce the innovative people I have met, and to share important events in the world of innovation and entrepreneurship.

New Year's resolutions are tricky, but I've learned that taking small steps rather than making impossible goals is the key to success. So, I'm not committing to daily blogging, but I will share at least weekly, and probably more often, the interesting innovation stuff I see.

Social Enterprise Competition

Unite for Sight is hosting its seventh annual conference GH/Innovate 2010, Global Health and Innovation Conference, this April at Yale University. As part of the conference, students may apply for the opportunity to pitch their social enterprise concept to the attendees of the meeting, which CNN has called a "meeting of the minds."

The projects may be country-focused or more global. Categories for submission are:

• Global Health


• Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship


• International Development


• International Education


• NGOs and Community-Based Programs

Instructions for applying can be found here.