January 19th at 6.30pm at The Mandarin Oriental Hotel.

Whilst not having all the answers (and probably not many of the questions!), the presentation will provoke a few thoughts and discussions into such questions such as:



Our speaker to kick off 2010 is Kevin Blick who has been Group Innovation Manager for 7 years for a global FMCG company, primarily focusing on product and packaging innovation. Actually it’s BAT but Kevin will be speaking representing himself and not his company.



Kevin arrived in Tokyo four years ago following a Swiss posting, to help set up a dedicated innovation centre from scratch. Initially he was involved in everything from ideation through to delivery, but for the last two years he has predominantly been focusing on the front end of innovation, responsible for Ideation and concept development.

During this time he has set up a successful open Ideation model involving consumers and other partners moving through insights and ideas to development prototypes

Previously, with the same company he worked in diverse areas from Engineering, Finance, Strategic planning, Supply Chain to Marketing. Prior to that he was doing something very different as a Civil engineer, working on large projects such as the development of Canary Wharf and Roads/Bridges projects in Africa

.

Having said all that, the best job he ever had was a Surf Lifeguard, managing to combine Surfing with Rescuing future consumers!