In a day and age where you blink and a decade of technology and intellectual property passes you by, these three panelists bring you a glimpse of trends from around the world, an insider’s peek into the process of how and where many global ideas are being invented, and an expert’s perspective on how to protect those new ideas. Join Jody Turner, Global trend expert, Joe Wilcox from renowned think tank and design labs IDEO, and Andrew Ehard from Merchant & Gould, one of the country’s premier IP law firms for this unique discussion of the convergence mixture of creativity and practical business sense.

Jim Banister

Jim Banister

Jim Banister is CEO of SpectrumDNA, Inc., a studio based in Park City, Utah, developing web/wireless “engines of engagement.”
He is the author of the book “Word of Mouse: The New Age of Networked Media” (Agate Fine Print, August 2004); and donates his time as Executive Creative Director the Center for Applied Media (Park City, UT), a non-profit institute for digital media education and enterprise incubation.

The common thread of Jim’s career is in engaging audiences through a mix of content and technology, and generating revenue doing it. Jim created and managed TRW’s Engineering Visualization Center; producing award-winning television and film properties; designed and built the multi-media and post-production system for Steven Spielberg’s Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Project; and created the XQuest television/cross-media franchise, currently being developed in partnership with Ron Howard and Imagine Entertainment. He also spent five years at Warner Bros. Online, where he was a prime-mover of the company’s digital media strategy and programming development, first as VP Production & Technology, and ultimately as Chief Development Officer.

His formal training includes a BS in Physics from San Diego State University, and an MS in Electrical Engineering (Entertainment Technology) from the University of Southern California

Jody Turner

Jody Turner is an innovation advocate, creative culture researcher, connector, and lecturer. Her presentations provide strategic pictures of today’s changing world injecting compelling solution driven content and anecdotes of success through individual, community and company effort. She founded the trend strategy company CultureofFuture.com in 2003 and has started a new cultural creative V-log venture called MakeREAL.tv this year.

Evolutions in the creative culture address pivotal solution-driven concepts in compelling and

Jody Turner is an innovation advocate, creative culture researcher, connector, and lecturer. Her presentations provide strategic pictures of today’s changing world injecting compelling solution driven content and anecdotes of success through individual, community and company effort. She founded the trend strategy company CultureofFuture.com in 2003 and has started a new cultural creative V-log venture called MakeREAL.tv this year.

Evolutions in the creative culture address pivotal solution-driven concepts in compelling and engaging ways. The economic downturn has forced us to pay attention and leverage broad, inventive solutions that allow us to re-address the directions we are heading in. Jody works with company, community and country to optimize this opening, to make sure we lean in toward a creative, solutions based future.

Jody’s ‘08 and ‘09 lectures included Istanbul, Mumbai, Hong Kong, South Korea, Brazil and multiple U.S. stops.

Joe Wilcox

Joe joined the IDEO ToyLab in April 2007 as a Toy Inventor/Model-maker, with a focus on proprietary mechanism development.

A kinetic artist at heart, Joe attended high school at North Carolina School of the Arts and college at Rhode Island School of Design. Prior to IDEO, Joe was an Industrial Designer at NASA Johnson Space Center, designing spacecraft interiors and microgravity storage solutions for the Crew Exploration Vehicle. At the MIT Manned Vehicle Lab, Joe designed and fabricated a mockup of a new kind of spacesuit called the Biosuit, a skin-tight suit that uses mechanical counter-pressure to mimic the atmospheric pressure of Earth.

For his RISD Thesis project, Joe developed a three-wheeled vehicle that leans into turns like a motorcycle but does not require a computer or complex mechanisms to operate. His evolving design is aimed at the emerging light electric vehicle market for in-city commuting.

Prior to his formal Industrial Design training at RISD, Joe spent six seasons with the Culpepper and Merriweather Great Combined Circus as a Roustabout, stage hand, prop builder and show drummer. The C+M Circus was an old style, one-ring, Big-Top tent show that played across 27 states, in a different town each day, for 250 days in a row! If you come from some far flung corner of the west, chances are Joe has been to your town!

So far, in his time with the IDEO ToyLab, Joe has worked on several successful projects that are coming to market. Stay tuned to see more of Joe’s work coming to public light!