The conference "Best Practices, Tools and Techniques for Managing The Front End of Innovation" is close to selling out. Because of the demand, last Friday the organizers announced that the conference will move from its original hotel to the Boston Marriott Quincy in Quincy, Massachusetts, where it will be held May 24 to 26.

More about the conference: Although many companies have dramatically improved product 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 that process -- the "front end" of innovation.

One reason this conference has become so hot is that most of the main players in the world of innovation are speaking, including: 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.

Again, 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