My head physically spins after two days at the World Innovation Forum from all the untapped possibilities that are out there just waiting for me to think of. For the last couple of years, just as we've done for several years at the World Business Forum, ExecuNet was invited by HSM to capture insights from the intellectual powerhouses on stage and produce thoughtful commentary for attendees and our members.

Without a doubt, the array of speakers challenged me to think in a different way; sometimes radically, like Michael Porter's reinvention of the healthcare delivery system; and sometimes incrementally, doing something to "earn my seat" at work every day, as Seth Godin said.

But seeing who was in the audience was especially interesting, too. Unlike the World Business Forum, where it was mostly the very top levels of organizations represented, the World Innovation Forum was incredibly diverse. "Innovation" has made its way out of R&D, technology and engineering and seeped into a variety of functions, levels, roles and departments.

I had lunch with a senior-level researcher/inventor who is role-playing with his team to better understand customer experience; learned about a company's collaborative software that enables enterprise-wide participation in idea generation; saw how an electronics company bundled existing products into a brand-new HD video-conferencing system; overheard conversations about tweaking a product for a new market; and found benefit in micro-segmentation over mass marketing.

Some ideas required grand scale technology; others just expanded thinking. But both onstage and off, wherever there was inspiration, I found innovation.

Robyn Greenspan
Robyn Greenspan is the Editor-in-Chief at ExecuNet, where she is responsible for setting and driving the editorial content engagement strategy across the private business network's publications and expert-led programming. She is also a Huffington Post blogger. You can follow her on Twitter @RobynGreenspan

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