The Sawyer Business School’s Center for Innovation and Change Leadership at Suffolk University honored Dr. Curtis Carlson, President and CEO of SRI International, with its first Global Leadership in Innovation and Collaboration Award.

“Successful innovation in today's globally competitive marketplace requires the integration of diverse resources and expertise seldom found within the confines of a single organization,” said Professor Robert DeFillippi, founder and director of the Center for Innovation and Change Leadership. “Dr. Carlson has demonstrated this principle through his many achievements working with organizations in the public and private sectors.”

DeFillipp continues, “SRI International is a global leader in innovation and collaboration, and Carlson has made his mark personally on the technology we use today. His work led to the high-definition television standard in the United States, and he led a team that won an Emmy Award for outstanding technical achievement for an SRI subsidiary.”

Carlson is co-author of the book, Innovation: The Five Disciplines for Creating What Customers Want. He has published or presented more than 50 technical publications and holds fundamental patents in the fields of image quality, image coding and computer vision.

Suffolk's Center for Innovation and Change Leadership is doing important work promoting innovation and collaboration among organizations and people, and I am honored to be selected for this year's award," said Carlson. "I look forward to sharing SRI's discipline of innovation with members of the University community during my visit."

The Global Leadership in Innovation and Collaboration Award is an annual event recognizing organizations that are global leaders in innovation and collaboration. Collaboration can increase the speed and quality of innovation as well as reduce costs and risks to each of the participants in the innovation enterprise.

As part of the Award Presentation activities,a distinguished panel discussed how industry applies Carlson's “Five Disciplines of Innovation”:

• Lu Ann Reeb, EMBA '08, president of Skyway Communication
• William Forbes, MBA '93, director of Supply Chain Technology, Raytheon Company
• Sean Belka, senior vice president of Fidelity Center for Applied Technology

Dr. Carlson also shared innovation best practices with faculty, students, alumni and others concerned with how innovation and collaboration initiatives can help organizations create value for themselves and their customers or clients.