Discovery Lecture Series features talk on innovation disruption

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Well-known business strategist, speaker and author Paul Nunes will give the Discovery Lecture Series talk, "Big Bang Disruption: Strategy in the Age of Devastating Innovation," at 1:30 p.m. Oct. 7 in Discovery Park's Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship, Room 121.

Nunes is global managing director at the Accenture Institute for High Performance (IHP), a global think-and-act tank with researchers in Beijing, Boston, London, Mumbai and Sao Paulo. He has helped establish Accenture IHP as a leading authority on defining and measuring performance.

"In his talk, Nunes will discuss the drivers of the new 'disruption' phenomenon in the global marketplace, the changes in business strategy and lifecycle that occur because of it, and options companies have for competing and winning in the business environment it creates," said event co-organizer Sabine Brunswicker, director of Research Center for Open Digital Innovation in Discovery Park and a professor of technology leadership and innovation.

The Discovery Lecture, which is free and open to the public, is based on the global best-selling book that Nunes coauthored with Larry Downes.

Purdue's Department of Technology Leadership & Innovation, the Research Center for Open Digital Innovation and the Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship are joining the Lilly Endowment as primary event sponsors.

Through a $1 million gift to Discovery Park from Indianapolis-based Lilly Endowment, Purdue launched the Discovery Lecture Series in 2006 to bring prominent speakers to campus.

"In the past, management could live their entire lives within a portion of a cycle of business," Nunes said. "Today, the cycles come much faster. We have to think differently. We think disruption means exactly what it says: the way things were before can no longer be. Because of the speed of change, companies need to see and become part of what we call the 'inevitable future.' "

Under Nunes' leadership, IHP researchers have developed seminal ideas on such topics as disruptive innovation, customer behavior, leadership teams, rural markets, public-sector innovation, and national and regional economic growth - insight that executives, economists and policy leaders can act upon to bring about meaningful change in their organizations.

Nunes has coauthored two other award-winning books and has had more than 100 articles and book chapters published on marketing and business strategy, including more than a dozen contributions to Harvard Business Review. He is a frequent speaker at industry and management conferences around the globe and has served as an invited speaker at many top business schools, including Harvard, MITSloan, Wharton, Dartmouth and INSEAD.

Launched in spring 2014, the Research Center for Open Digital Innovation is building on Purdue's strengths in computational systems and modeling, technology, engineering, the sciences and entrepreneurship to advance research and offer research-based interdisciplinary graduate education in innovation.

Writers: Phillip Fiorini, 765-496-3133, pfiorini@purdue.edu 

Anna Schultz, 765-494-4719, schult70@purdue.edu 

Source: Sabine Brunswicker, 765-494-0880, sbrunswi@purdue.edu