Based within the Institute for Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development (IEED), Dr Ellie Hamilton, Associate Dean for Enterprise, , Knowledge Exchange Project Manager and , Senior Teaching Fellow are representing LUMS at the Berkeley Innovation Forum this week in California.

IEED were delighted last year to be invited to join the forum by Henry Chesbrough who is the world renowned leader in Open Innovation based at the Haas School of Business. IEED had been identified as a centre of excellence for delivering research led engagement with business. 

This forum is being delivered from the world class Sky Deck, a start-up accelerator and technology entrepreneurship centre operated by the University of California, Berkeley.

During their visit, Helen, Ian and Ellie have been invited to deliver a lecture to a group of graduate students studying open innovation and business models. They will also be visiting Singularity University, a new university founded in 2007 in the heart of Silicon Valley.

The Berkeley Innovation Forum is a two-day conference attended by some of the top innovative businesses including HP, Cisco, Dupont, Coca Cola, Johnson and Johnson and Kraft. This is an exclusive forum for developing leading edge open innovation and business models for the 21st Century. This work compliments IEEDs, developing links with the Work Foundation in London, particularly its initiative with the Big Innovation Centre. 

One of the early exciting outputs for IEED has been the development of an open innovation case study with Unilever.

In addition, IEED are the project leaders of the collaborative £5m London Creative and Digital Fusion Project, delivered with The Work Foundation, form its London offices. Partners include: ImaginationLancaster, Queen Mary University London, The University of London, The Royal College of Art and the Council of Industry and Higher Education.   

Ellie Hamilton of IEED said: “We are extremely proud to be developing our national and international relationships and also to be increasingly engaging with both SMEs and larger corporate businesses. At IEED we are constantly looking at new fresh ideas surrounding open innovation and entrepreneurship and how we can develop exciting examples of knowledge exchange in a national and international context.”