International Women’s Forum Celebrates Global Innovation

June 15, 2014
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IWF conference panel

By Valerie Freeman, Imprimis Group CEO

I recently attended the International Women’s Forum World Cornerstone Conference in Berlin, Germany. The theme of this conference was Innovation, and the speakers were phenomenal. We learned about innovative concepts, products and services from speakers such as Cedrik Neike, Vice President, Advanced Services for Cisco in Europe, Middle East, Africa, Russia and EMEAR.; Britta Fuenfstueck, CEO of the Clinical Products

Division of Siemens Healthcare and the first woman in the 167-year history of the company to lead a division; Tobias Wallisser, Co-Founder of the Laboratory for Visionary Architecture, a think tank with offices in Stuttgart and Sydney; and Professor Dr. Monika Schnitzer, Chair of Comparative Economics at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munchen. They believe that 50 percent of the top IT firms will not exist in five years. Britta explained that most of healthcare costs go to therapy, so technology to detect diseases quicker is key to driving down cost.

Information technology is still considered a cost in many companies and instead should be an enabler.

Our next speakers expressed optimism about the future that innovation brings us but also mentioned the disadvantages – from Michelle Unger, VP of Worldwide Sales for IBM Watson Group, the cognitive technology that processes information more like a human than a computer; Matthias Willenbacher, pioneer in the field of renewable energy; Anita Sands, who serves on the Board of Directors of Symantec Corp. a Fortune 500 computer security company and who earned a Ph.D. in atomic and molecular physics; and Sara Farley, COO of the Global Knowledge Initiative, whose goal is to solve global challenges in science, technology and innovation. Their insight into “The Internet of Things” opened our eyes to the certainty of new processes, new consumer interactions and entirely new business models.

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The 2014 World Cornerstone Conference Opening Reception

At lunch, we honored four young women researchers for their contributions to scientific research:  Mila-Mareen Leuthold for her contributions to cancer research and molecular life-sciences; Natascha Zhang for her contributions to the neurosciences and molecular biosciences; Lena Veit for her contributions to the neural and behavioral sciences; Dr. Julia Fischer, leading German biologist and primatologist

Another interesting program addressed  “Women & Power:  Where Are We Headed?”  Germany’s group of thirty firms that make up their blue-chip DAX stock index plan to drive up women’s presence to 35% in leadership roles by 2020.  Germany is worse than the U.S. in that only 3.7% of the membership of their listed companies have women on the board of directors. Anka Wittenberg, SVP, Head of People Sustainability and Chief Diversity Officer at SAP, Dr. Jutta Allmendinger, the first female President of the Social Science Center in Berlin, Elke Ferner, a member of Parliament, and Lena Veit, one of our awardees, discussed how we are driven by stereotypes in hiring and promotion and how to overcome those stereotypes.

Plenary 2 – Innovation: A Case for Global Optimism? featured (left to right) moderator Jessica Saltz, Berlin Correspondent for international news channel France 24; Matthias Willenbacher, Co-Founder of juwi Energy Group; Michelle Unger, Vice President of Worldwide Sales for IBM Watson Group; Anita Sands, board director of Symantec Corporation; and Sara Farley, Co-Founder and COO of the Global Knowledge Initiative.
Plenary 2 – Innovation: A Case for Global Optimism? featured (left to right) moderator Jessica Saltz, Berlin Correspondent for international news channel France 24; Matthias Willenbacher, Co-Founder of juwi Energy Group; Michelle Unger, Vice President of Worldwide Sales for IBM Watson Group; Anita Sands, board director of Symantec Corporation; and Sara Farley, Co-Founder and COO of the Global Knowledge Initiative.

We also heard speakers on such topics as fueling innovation through our educational institutions, labor market reform, and Germany and the future of Europe.  We also experienced field trips to venues in art, architecture, design, fashion, music and film to meet the creative innovators in these areas.  Our dine-arounds (how they found so many private homes to host us I’ll never know) were more intimate dinners of about 12 people including our hostess to foster conversation about our individual home countries and what is happening there.

The International Women’s Forum advances leadership across cultures and continents by connecting women of significant and diverse achievement.There are more than 5,500 members across five continents and 29 nations.