The seventh BGC+i conference, held at the Palacio Euskalduna in Bilbao, has drawn more than 700 participants. During the two-day meeting, whose theme was “Open Innovation, the Sum Total of Ideas,” around twenty speakers both from national and international institutions presented their insights on innovation as well as their own experiences in their companies and organizations. This year the emphasis has been on the mechanisms and dynamics of collaboration which are based on the mutual sharing of ideas and which lead to innovation. The conference was organised by the Society for Industrial Promotion and Reconversion (SPRI), the Spanish Association of Electronics, Information Technology and Telecommunications Industries (AETIC), the Association for Telecommunication Technologies in the Basque Country (GAIA) and PMP, an innovation and management contents company.

The organising committee has expressed its satisfaction with the outcome of the conference and has pointed out that the large number of participants is a good indication of the growing interest and attention that the conference attracts. In particular, the organisers have noticed that there are delegates who keep coming back to these meetings year after year. This shows how “people who have attended the Conference in previous years have put into practice in their own businesses the ideas that they learnt here and have established relationships which have had a real impact on their businesses.” The organisers have emphasised that innovation is now more relevant than ever and that the small and medium-sized companies in the Basque Country must not miss the opportunity to join in with the innovations efforts.

Plenary speakers included representatives of some of the world’s best-renowned innovation centres. Among them was Henry Chesbrough, executive director of the Centre for Open Innovation at the Haas School of Business in California and considered to be the father of “Open Innovation”, who offered some insights on how to turn innovation into a valuable asset in organisations. Enric Von Hippel, head of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group at MIT Sloan School of Management, highlighted the new rules of the game that organisations must take into account in order to face “the biggest change since the Industrial Revolution”. Joaquim Vilà, head of the Executive Programme on Management Innovation and Innovation Professor at IESE, showed the ways in which innovation is crucial for the continued success of an organisation. Jules Goddard, research fellow of the Management Innovation Lab at the London Business School, gave an overview of the six fundamental pillars on which current management must be based, in the context of people’s expectation and the new rules of the game of the current environment.

Participants also had the opportunity to gain first-hand access to the experiences of companies like Nespresso, NH Hotels, Ikea, Alegria, SkunkFunk and Cirque du Soleil.