Lighting and technology companies today face complex challenges in planning products and systems including: 1) the intrusion of IT and big data into many industries, especially lighting; 2) rapid change in technology following a period of many decades of relative stasis in lighting; 3) incomplete understanding of rates of adoption and replacement; 4) a business culture that assumes “disruption” and blitzscaling that work for IT and consumer electronics also work for lighting; and 5) lack of perspectives on and tools for envisioning and managing the future of lighting, controls, and building technology.
This daylong workshop combines insights and tools from diverse sources: scenario planning; advanced midrange crowd-sourced forecasting; and behavioral economics. Workshop registrants will receive a pre-workshop primer with preparatory material, including macro scenarios that the speaker team has developed. The workshop begins with presentations from the panel that provide relevant ideas, case studies, and examples of improved decision making and successful strategy in different companies. Then teams are formed, each is given a specific hypothetical product roadmap with one or more critical decisions and challenged to think it through, creating 3-4 different scenarios that are used to test assumptions, test ideas, and set metrics for success. Each team then presents its scenarios to the speaker panel, who pose as investors interested in funding the project and offer comments and feedback.
The workshop is designed for product managers, engineers, designers, sales and marketing professionals, specifiers, technical advisors, and C level company officers, consultants, and investors in lighting and electronics manufacturing companies who need strategic decision support tools to help manage technology development and integration, sales and marketing, operations, logistics, SKU proliferation, certifications, code compliance, and supply chain coordination.
Learning Objectives
1. Improve product roadmap decisions in assessing and implementing new technologies, allocating development resources, investing, marketing, and product management
2. Use new perspectives on changes in adoption and replacement of components, systems, and infrastructure of communications, controls, lighting, and power distribution
3. Crowdsource collaborative networks with diverse views that test assumptions, key questions, roadmaps, and strengthen forecasting
4. Stimulate deep imagination and visualization by understanding, then moving beyond the limits of the past to actively creating the future
Speakers
Scott Yu, Chief Creative Officer, Owner, Vode Lighting
Over the course of his career as a product designer, Scott has always worked with three criteria in mind: low to no production waste, low energy consumption, and long product life. Whether it was at Ford, Peugeot or Volvo -- where his work on Citroen’s ECO 2000, a research vehicle, delivered an unheard of 90 mpg – Scott has always made the environment a priority. Scott was first drawn to the lighting business at a time when it had yet to take seriously the imperatives of sustainability. He found LEDs to be an ideal platform for transforming the industry and, with Vode, a company where his ethos of doing more with less was championed. Before Vode, Scott co-founded San Francisco-based Gingko Design and led the firm in winning numerous awards, including IDEA, CES, iF, Good Design, ID Magazine, and Singapore Design. A graduate of the Art Center College of Design, Scott was the youngest manager at Ford, overseeing its Small Car Studio, developing global platforms and designs. In his free time, Scott is a tinkerer, remodeling his house toward net-zero energy. He’s also a devoted cyclist - counting Mt. Tam and Marin headlands among his favorite trails – as well as a paraglider, the result of his life-long passion for non-motor-assisted flight.
Jerry Mix, President, Finelite
Jerry is an experienced president with a long history of working in the electrical and electronic manufacturing industries. At Finelite he provides operational leadership and management of the company with full responsibility for meeting business development targets and technical and development milestones; identifying, developing, and executing strategies for profitable revenue growth from existing product capabilities. Jerry is widely recognized in the lighting industry for his ability to build, lead, and manage high-caliber teams focused on profitable revenue growth, creativity, technology advancement, innovation and quality. He is adept at defining markets and developing strategies to capitalize on technology, market conditions and segment opportunities. Jerry was a founder of Wattstopper and has been active as an investor and advisor in a number of successful lighting and electronics startups. In September 2019 he received the Pioneer Award from the IES San Francisco Section, in recognition of his role in pioneering Bay Area lighting businesses. He has a BSBA degree in Marketing from the University of Arizona.
Paul Pickard, Chief Technology Officer, Ecosense
Paul is a 21-year veteran of the lighting industry, having held technical leadership positions at Acuity Brands, LED Lighting Fixtures, Cree, and is currently CTO at Ecosense Lighting. He has provided technical leadership for a number of industry-first products, including the LLF LR6 downlight module, the Cree CR24 2x2 LED Troffer, the Cree LR24 LED Troffer family, and the first LED A-lamp offered below $10, the Cree 40W equivalent bulb. A Mechanical Engineering graduate from the University of New Mexico, his current areas of focus are strategic technology development, systems engineering, optical innovation and color science. He holds over 190 US patents, with many more pending.
Eoin Billings, Director, Billings Jackson
A founding partner of industrial design firm Billings Jackson Design, Eoin is responsible for architectural project work, and has worked as an industrial designer in architecture for twenty years. Eoin won the graduate’s Gold Medal from the Society of Designers in Ireland in 1991 and went on to run major projects for the in-house industrial design department at Grimshaw where he met his business partner, Duncan Jackson. Collaboration is key to Eoin’s professional approach and he runs regular design strategy workshops, drawing from a wide network of experts to fast-track the design development process. He is particularly interested in developing methods where craft, tools, materials and technology can be exploited to improve the time to manufacture and the quality of solutions.
David Wilts, Founder & CEO, Digital Masterplanning
David's creative and entrepreneurial focus helped him to transform the companies he's worked for in the past. Always focusing on clients and end users, he's solved problems and invented solutions that draw on years of experience in planning, design, development, and operations - both in real estate and software. His firm, Digital Masterplanning (DMP) helps financiers, developers, and owners incorporate disruptive buil;ding technology into their organizations. Before DMP, Davis was an Associate Principal at Arup in Chicago, where he developed and led the firm's Digital Consulting work creating new offerings, including: Digital Masterplanning, Digital (Smart) Building Design, Technology Owner's Representation, BIM Master Planning, Building Technology (IT, AV, Security) Design, and Unified Collaboration. He was also the Global director of Integrated Building Technology for Crestron, developing the firm's design assist program for smart, integrated building technology and software and hardware to support an overall integrated building strategy and consulting on on over 100 smart building projects around the world.
Clifton Stanley Lemon, CEO, Clifton Lemon Associates
Clifton manages Clifton Lemon Associates a San Francisco based consultancy providing strategy, product development, marketing, and education services to manufacturers and firms in the lighting and energy sectors. He was formerly Marketing Communications Manager for Soraa, Director of Business Development at Integral Group in Oakland, and founder and CEO of BrandSequence, a customer research and brand management firm. Clifton has deep knowledge of sustainability, MEP, lighting, and LED technology, is well connected to the Bay Area, national, and international AEC and lighting and AEC communities, and is passionate about lighting, sustainable building, and behavioral issues in the built environment. He is an active writer and speaker and is a past president of the Illuminating Engineering Society, San Francisco Section, and is on the Advisory Boards of LightFair International, Strategies in Light, and LightShow West.