Days Hours Minutes Seconds
Register to attend in person
Register to attend online
The International Symposium on Corporate, Policy and Wicked Acceleration is a premier annual event at Imperial College Business School in collaboration with the Royal College of Art targeted at impact venturing, systems thinking and policy innovation practitioners from across industries, including some of the leading scholars in this burgeoning area.
This one-of-a-kind event will take place on 26th and 27th of June 2025 at Imperial College Londonâs South Kensington Campus.
This 5th Symposium will feature a combination of keynote speeches, panel discussions, case study presentations, and fireside chats to share ideas and best practices on different modalities of acceleration, and to explore ways to address the greatest challenges of our time and envision desirable futures.
Day 1 | 9:00 am – 6:00 pm
Imperial Business School, South Kensington Campus
Day 2 | 9:00 am – 2:00 pm
Imperial Business School, South Kensington Campus
C-Level executives, Corporate Innovation managers, R&D Chiefs, Venture Builders, Accelerator Managers and Founders, Open Innovation Experts and Leading Academics
How does the world look like for corporate innovation during the ongoing AI revolution, geopolitical tensions and unstable economic scenarios?
What are the lessons learned from recent experiments in corporate acceleration, venture building and digital transformation in both established and nascent industries?
How do we get corporate accelerators, open innovation, and moonshot initiatives to achieve impact beyond the âinnovation theatreâ?
In times of Grand Challenges (climate change, geopolitical tensions, inflation, plastic pollution, energy transition), How might innovators in corporations, universities and policy use wicked acceleration tools to address such Grand Challenges?
How do we ensure sustainable digital transformation at the firm, value chain, and ecosystem levels?
How might we leverage Generative AI to enable and sustain corporate, digital & wicked acceleration initiatives
Imperial College Business School
South Kensington Campus,
London SW7 2AZ, UK
corpacceleration@imperial.ac.uk
Mehek Khanna is a Design Researcher at Wicked Acceleration Labs and the Co-Lead and Curator of the Foresight Sprint at the Royal College of Art. Her research focuses on addressing complex socio-technical challenges using systems dynamics, strategic foresight and humanity-centric design. She has a background in consulting, design and impact-led innovation and has delivered solutions for Deloitte, Dr. Reddyâs Pharmaceuticals, and the Government of Maharashtra, amongst others. She holds an MDes from the Royal College of Art.
Author, Former Serial Entrepreneur and Adjunct Professor at Stanford, Berkeley & Columbia and Visiting Professor at Imperial College Business School
Steve Blank has led one heck of an interesting life. Heâs had three careers: First, in the U.S. Air Force for four years during the Vietnam War. Next, as a Silicon Valley entrepreneur in 8 startups in two decades (with four IPOs). Currently as an academic teaching at Stanford, Berkeley, Columbia and NYU.
Steve is the father of Modern Entrepreneurship. He has changed how startups are built; how entrepreneurship is taught worldwide; how science is commercialised in the U.S.; and how companies and the government innovate.
Peter A. Gloor is a Research Scientist at the Center for Collective Intelligence at MIT’s Sloan School of Management where he leads a twenty-year project exploring Collaborative Innovation Networks, wellbeing and happiness. He is also Founder and Chief Creative Officer of software company galaxyadvisors, and Honorary Professor at University of Cologne, and at Jilin University, Changchun, China. He also taught at Universidad Cattolica in Santiago de Chile, Aalto University Helsinki, University of Rome Tor Vergata, University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW) and University of Applied Sciences Lucerne (HSLU). Earlier he was a partner with PwC and Deloitte, where he was head of eBusiness Europe, and the section leader for software engineering at UBS. He got his Ph.D in computer science from the University of Zurich and was a Post-Doc at the MIT Lab for Computer Science. His newest book âHappimetrics – Leveraging AI to Untangle the Surprising Link Between Ethics, Happiness and Business Successâ appeared fall 2022 at Edward Elgar Publishing
Christopher L. Tucci is Professor of Digital Strategy & Innovation at Imperial College Business School and Co-Director (Education) for I-X, Imperial’s new campus concept centered on AI/ML, data, and digital. Professor Tucci is Academic Director of the Centre for Digital Transformation at Imperial College Business School as well. He was Professor of Management of Technology at the Ecole Polytechnique FĂ©dĂ©rale de Lausanne (EPFL), where he held the Chair in Corporate Strategy & Innovation. From 2013-2018, he was Dean of the College of Management at EPFL. In 2018, he was Visiting Thought Leader at CEIBS in Shanghai, China. He received the degrees of Ph.D. in Management from the Sloan School of Management, MIT; SM (Technology & Policy) from MIT; and BS (Mathematical Sciences), AB (Music), and MS (Computer Science) from Stanford University. He was an industrial computer scientist involved in developing Internet protocols and applying artificial intelligence tools. Professor Tucci teaches courses in Deep Tech Acceleration, Co-Creation in AI & Robotics, AI Ventures, Design Thinking, Digital Strategy, and Innovation Management.
His primary area of interest is in how firms make transitions to new business models, technologies, and organizational forms. He also studies crowdsourcing, Internetworking, and digital innovations. He has published articles in, among others, Academy of Management Review (AMR), Strategic Management Journal, Management Science, Research Policy, Communications of the ACM, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Academy of Management Annals, and Journal of Product Innovation Management. His article with Allan Afuah, âCrowdsourcing as solution to distant search,â won the Best Paper of 2012 for AMR. He has served in leadership positions in the Academy of Management (AOM) and the Strategic Management Society and was elected in 2023 to the leadership track of the Academy of Management’s Board of Governors.
Myrna Flores is the Executive Director of the Centre for Digital Transformation at Imperial College Business School and the co-founder and president of the Lean Analytics Association (LAA) which was launched in 2012 as a spin-off from the Ăcole Polytechnique FĂ©dĂ©rale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland.Â
Myrna Flores has over 20 years of experience in driving process improvement and innovation initiatives, delivering training programs and organising hackathons, engaging and collaborating with key stakeholders and teams to solve strategic challenges.Â
Myrna collaborates with an ecosystem of partners on innovation projects, designs and delivers ad-hoc training programs, and diffuses the latest trends and best practices to inspire organisations to accelerate their transformation journeys. She is a Design Thinker passionate about working with organisations to implement new ways of working and design user-centric solutions. She is also very interested in designing new business models which integrate digital technologies and sustainability best practices to automate business processes and move from a linear delivery approach to a circular economy model aligned with the United Nationsâ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
She has a PhD in Open Innovation from Politecnico di Milano (2006), a Masterâs degree in Manufacturing Science (1999) and a Mechanical Engineering degree (1996) from TecnolĂłgico de Monterrey. She also carried out a postgraduate course in IIT Madras, India in Technologies and Sustainable Development. Myrna has published more than 50 articles in journals and presented at multiple international conferences. She is co-author of four books: Digital Factory for Human Oriented Systems (2010), Lean Product Development Best Practices, Ten Industrial Success Stories (2017), and DARE to Gemba Walk, A Practical Approach for Leaders and Teams Towards Collaborative Problem Solving (2020) and Lean Thinking Evolution, Getting Prepared for the Digital Era (2022).
