DISCUSSION GROUPS

April 27, 2012
NYU Stern School of Business
Tisch Hall, 40 West Fourth Street

(Note: You must be registered for the Conference to attend.)

Room UC.03
DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION 2.0
Adam Smith Revisited: Towards a Moral Capitalism?
Craig Hatkoff - Co-Founder Tribeca Film Festival
Irwin Kula - President of CLAL
Matthew Bishop - US Business Editor and NY Borough Chief, The Economist

Is Capitalism under attack or is the current distress a normal part of creative destruction? Is polarization paralyzing society and making politics hopelessly dysfunctional? Does applying Disruptive Innovation 2.0 provide a useful framework for gathering insights or creating solutions? Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments may provide a number of prescriptives.  New business models for moral  capitalism are beginning to emerge rooted in individual and collective identity  will be discussed.

Room UC.04
THE IMPORTANCE OF FAILURE IN DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION; INNOVATION AS ART
Dr. Gill Pratt - DARPA Program Manager
Matt Keennon - Project Manager for Nano Hummingbird, AeroVironment Inc.
Marc Raibert – Robotics Engineer and President of Boston Dynamics
Clifford Ross – Artist, Clifford Ross Studio

In 1905 Einstein and Picasso were both reading Henri Poincare.  Picasso’s move toward non-representational art was inspired by Poincare’s non-euclidian geometry.  Einstein was influenced by a number of emerging artists. Crossing boundaries will be examined through the interaction of art, technology and failure in “big” innovation.  Successful innovation invariably requires failure, taking big risks and accepting big losses.  Great engineers rely on art for inspiration and great design and artists more and more rely on technology for their aesthetic inspiration.

Room UC.05
THE CHANGING FACE OF VENTURE CAPITAL
Alan Patricof – Founder and Managing Director, Greycroft Partners
Rachael Chong – Founder & CEO, Catchafire
Robin Chan – Entrepreneur, Former General Manager, Asia Business Operations, Zynga
Anand Subramanian, Chief Executive, NimbleTV

As disruptive business models unfold at an accelerating rate and new sources of venture funding for start-ups, Alan Patricof, the Dean of American Venture Capital industry, will lead a discussion with entrepreneurs at various stages of the start-up life cycle.  How has the landscape changed since the early days of Apple, Google and Microsoft.  From Facebook to Pinterest to Instagram what is on the horizon for start-ups.

Room UC.07
VISUALIZING POSSIBLE FUTURES OF MEDIA
Dave Blakely - Director of Technology Strategy, IDEO
Ambika Nigam - Business Designer, IDEO

Please join us for a creative session moderated by IDEO, a global innovation consultancy.  The premise of this session is that empathy for other humans is the single most powerful source of creativity and innovation.  We will start by examining the lives of people who are very different from us and assembling personas for them.  Next we will brainstorm together to visualize new directions in media that are relevant to our personas. 

Room UC.09
Bigger Than Carnegie, Faster than Starbucks: The Keys to Room to Read’s Success and Scalability
John Wood, Founder and Board Co-Chair, Room to Read

How do non-profits build a global network and scale successfully to engender change? In 2000, John Wood founded Room to Read, an organization that believes World Change Starts with Educated Children(r), after a fast-paced and distinguished career with Microsoft leading marketing and business development teams throughout Asia. John continues to bring Room to Read a vision for a scalable solution to transform the lives of millions of children in developing countries by focusing on literacy and gender equality in education. John's award-winning memoir, Leaving Microsoft to Change the World: An Entrepreneur's Odyssey to Educate the World's Children (Harper Collins, 2006), tells how he raised over $150 million from a "standing start" to develop one of the fastest-growing nonprofits in history, applying the business acumen honed at Microsoft toward his passion to change the world. Spurred by John's chance encounter with a Nepali headmaster at a rural school devoid of books while on a Himalayan trek, Room to Read is now one of the fastest growing, most effective, and award-winning non-profits of the last decade-having impacted over 6 million children. Learn what is unique about Room to Read’s model, how the organization has built a chapter network of over 10,000 volunteers, and succeeded in establishing libraries at a rate of 6 per day! www.roomtoread.org

Room UC.11
TALKING BACK TO FACEBOOK
James Steyer – CEO and Founder Common Sense Media

What does it mean to be a child in today’s world, where social media and connected devices have removed boundaries and volume controls? Has technology and the use of social media created a new, complicated level of communication for our kids today? For better and for worse?  James Steyer is CEO of Common Sense Media, the nation’s leading authority on kids, media and technology. Jim’s latest book Talking Back to Facebook will be released in a couple weeks.  The book explores what parents can do to navigate their children’s media-saturated lives and the effect of social media on the first generation of digital natives.  Jim offers engaging advice and fascinating insights on the impact of technology on all of us.           

Room UC.19
Dimensionalized Storytelling. When Technology Fuels Art.
Janine Silvera - Vice President and Founder, Condé Nast Ideactive
Howard Goldkrand, Executive Producer, Condé Nast Ideactive
Tom Dunlap – Executive Producer, RSA
Larry Shapiro - Fourth Wall Studios

Learn how Condé Nast Ideactive, an agency built on the Condé Nast DNA, evolves transmedia storytelling by fusing the latest digital technology and cultural foresight.

Condé Nast Ideactive teams with RSA Films and Fourth Wall Studios to build
the next immersive, transmedia ride.  Using proprietary Fourth Wall
technology, the partners have scripted a personalized, multi-dimensional
experience that engages users on multiple sensory plains.  The panel takes
the audience through the creative, technological and logistical considerations as they discuss this project and implications for the future of storytelling, entertainment and advertising.

Room UC.24 
DIGITAL MEDIA, (DIGITAL) DISRUPTION:  ARAB SPRING TO KONY 2012
Yvette Aberdingk Thijm - Executive Director, WITNESS
Sam Gregory - Program Director, WITNESS
Bukeni Tete Waruzi - Program Manager, Africa and the Middle East, WITNESS
Raja Althaibani - Program Associate, Middle East & North Africa, WITNESS
Jared Cohen – Director, Google Ideas

The recent campaign film on Uganda by Invisible Children - 'Kony 2012' calling for the arrest of war criminal Joseph Kony has had a dramatic reach unseen for any previous human rights film online.  It also provoked a rare public debate about the methods and effects of transnational activism. Meanwhile, activists in Syria, Egypt and elsewhere continue to use digital media to press for change in their own countries. This break-out session will look at how we understand the successes, the controversies and the challenges of digital video advocacy - from videos that get 100 million views on YouTube to live broadcasts from the streets of Homs, and what we can all do to better ensure that both types of video advocacy contribute to meaningful social change.

Room UC.25
NYU CONNECTS AT TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL
Screening of Connected: An Autoblogography about Love, Death & Technology
Tiffany Shlain – Filmmaker

Join us to see the film The New York Times called, “Examining everything from the Big Bang to twitter” and that was just selected by The US State Department as one of the films to represent America at Embassies around the world.

With wonderful heart and an impressive sense of scale, Tiffany Shlain’s vibrant, funny and insightful documentary, CONNECTED, explores the visible and invisible connections linking major issues of our time—the environment, consumption, population growth, technology, human rights, the global economy—while searching for her place in the world during a transformative time in her life. From founding The Webby Awards to being a passionate advocate for The National Day of Unplugging, Shlain’s love/hate relationship with technology serves as the springboard for a thrilling exploration of modern life…and our interconnected future. Equal parts documentary and memoir, the film unfolds during a year in which technology and science literally become a matter of life and death for the director. The Shlain family life merges with philosophy to create both a personal portrait and a proposal for ways we can move forward as a civilization. Using a brilliant mix of animation, archival footage, and home movies, Shlain reveals the surprising ties that link us not only to the people we love but also to the world at large. An exhilarating rollercoaster ride, CONNECTED explores that after centuries of declaring independence, it may be time for us to declare our interdependence instead.  www.connectedthefilm.com