Inspiring Innovation Speaker

If I had no budget limitations, who would I invite to speak about innovation for my colleagues? Recently I was asked to provide a list of inspiring speakers about innovation. The focus of the talk should be in the area of creativity, innovation and invention. This is the list I came up with. If you have other's you would recommend, please leave a comment!

My list, again, in no specific order:

  1. Scott Berkun, author of 'The Myth of Innovation'. Nice book about what innovation is and what it's not.
  2. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of 'Flow: The psychology of optimal experience'.
  3. John Seely Brown, ex Xerox PARC director, talks, publishes and thinks about new forms of learning and education and the role of technology. Wrote an interesting report for McKinsey called ‘The next frontiers of innovation’ with the next person on this list
  4. John Hagel, thinker/author about mega trends (shifts) in the world and its meaning for enterprises.
  5. Clay Christensen, author of the well-known books about innovation: The Innovators Prescription, the Innovator's Dilemma and the Innovator's Solution.
  6. Dev Patnaik, author of book about innovation culture ('Wired to Care') and recently wrote a great article titled: ‘Innovation starts with empathy’.
  7. David Murray, recently wrote a book about building ideas on other ideas. It's titled ‘Borrowing Brilliance’.
  8. Henry William Chesbrough, the Open Innovation guru.
  9. Edward de Bono, author of several inspiring books about creativity, invention and innovation.
  10. Rene Jansen, inspiring speaker on the edge of organization, innovation and technology.
  11. Someone at IBM to tell about their (Innovation) Jam Sessions.
  12. Someone at Innocentive or Proctor & Gamble to tell about Innocentive and crowdsourcing innovation.
  13. Dave Snowden, special thinker and practioners on the edge of innovation and knowledge management.
  14. Thomas Davenport, recently published an interesting article about 'reverse engineering Google's innovation machine'.
  15. Tim Brown, director of IDEO about 'design thinking'.
  16. Darell Rigby, Kara Gruver and James Allen, authors of a June HBR article 'Innovation in Turbulent Times'. Interesting how they show companies that successfully and structurally innovate have paired leadership: analytic left-brainer thinkers and an imaginative right-brain partner.
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