The biggest names in innovation and creativity are on the agenda for the upcoming conference "Best Practices, Tools and Techniques for Managing The Front End of Innovation," which will be held May 24 to 26 at the Hyatt Harborside Hotel in Boston.

Why is the "front end of innovation" so important? Because although many companies have dramatically improved development cycle time and efficiency by implementing formal development processes, these processes won't work without ideas to feed them. A steady stream of new, high-quality concepts is necessary to fill a development process pipeline, and this conference is about how to manage the process of filling that pipeline.

Keynote speakers include: Teresa Amabile of Harvard Business School, John Seely Brown of Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Dr. Stephanie Burns of Dow Corning, Clayton M. Christensen of Harvard Business School, Eric von Hippel of MIT Sloan School of Management, and Dean Kamen, entrepreneur and inventor of the Segway inventor.

I've written about almost all of these folks over the 18 months I've been writing this blog, so it will be no surprise to anyone that you will also find *us* at this conference! Decision Analyst Innovation Services will be an exhibitor at "Managing The Front End of Innovation," so if you come to the conference, come by our booth and meet us.

Word has it this conference might sell out, and you don't want to miss this one, so if you're thinking at all about registering, you should go ahead and do it now. To register, click on the banner ad to the right, go here, call 888.670.8200 or email register@iirusa.com.

Please note: IdeaFlow is a media partner for this conference. That means we're involved with the conference, though no actual money is changing hands! If you register because you saw this, please let them know by mentioning this priority code: M1604XIF