I was invited to speak at marcusevans's New Product Development Strategies. This time I was talking on Nokia's product range and software platforms, representing in my new role in Nokia Devices. Last year I was invited to the same event (I must have done something right last year since they invited me back ;) as the Head of Marketing for Nokia Research Center, talking about open innovation at NRC.

The event itself had improved from last year. Presentations were of high quality, all of them addressing the topic and the agenda was more structured. Highlights included Dagmar Chlosta from Adidas who walked us through an interesting journy of how Adidas has turned their sample production virtual. They have been able to reduce time-to-market, and both material consumption as well as work time previously put into making physical product samples. At the same time of course raising the Adidas cool factor by taking activity into virtual reality.

Professor Tim McAloone from the University of Denmark reminded us of the 3 top environmental risks all companies face: 1) Global warming (recommends a book by Mark Lynas - the six degrees - showing scenarios what happens if temperature rises 1,2,3,4,5 or 6 degrees) 2) Peak Oil - the point when we consume 100% of all the oil we can find and use, and 3) Food crisis - price of rice and wheat has already now tripled within a short period of time. Heavy stuff.

I also had nice chats with Susanna Bill from SonyEricsson. We had our presentations grouped together and were both remembering the 'good old times' when there was only Motorola, Ericsson and Nokia around and life was so much simpler. (I remember a cover of Red Herring magazine back in 2003 with the title 'MEN behaving badly', implying that these 3 companies control the industry so that no one else can get in). Susanna was also the chair of the conference, as I was last year.

Last but no least, time for me to get all excited about something again: CREAX. That deserves its own entry.