"The Challenge of Commercialization"

Co-Sponsored by the IEEE Consultants Network

Presentations

Meeting Overview:

Many early stage companies focus their attention on developing "cool" products.  Far too often, they do not focus on the most critical aspects of the commercialization process, the definition of customer need.  This panel of experts from multiple technology sectors will discuss the challenges to commercialize technologies and products that at first glance appear to meet a substantial market need, but continue to remain in the early adopter stage.

Panelists:

Jeffrey Bentley, CEO CellTech Power. Jeff is responsible for company management, business development, strategic relationships and investments. He has over 15 years of leadership experience in the fuel cell industry and 30 years of experience including development of military and high technology products. For ten years he was a Vice President and energy consultant for Arthur D. Little, now TIAX. He has founded four fuel cell ventures, all of which are operating today or have been acquired. His broad functional experience includes military and computer product engineering, technical sales, marketing and business development and general management. He has a B.S.M.E. and M.S.M.E. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In addition to being one of the founders of CellTech Power LLC, his previous fuel cell experience includes founding Epyx, a spin off from Arthur D. Little developing fuel processors, Nuvera Fuel Cells, raised $15 million from strategic investors and Fideris Test Solutions, and raised $5.5 million from venture investors. 

Michael Kuperstein, Founder and CEO, Metaphor Solutions.  Michael was voted as one of the top ten most influential leaders in e-commerce in 2001 by the Mass eComm Association. Michael got his Ph.D. from MIT, and has 12 patents issued and pending. He has more than 25 years experience in academics, technology and entrepreneurship.

In 1999, Michael founded eTrue, a biometric company that authenticates people for computer network access using fingerprints and/or face images. While there, he got several patents for his face recognition inventions. eTrue was sold to Viisage (Nasdaq: VISG) in 2002. Before that, he founded Symbus Technology, Inc., which developed software for automated data entry. In 1993, Symbus merged into Captiva Software Corp and became the global leader in information capture. It was acquired by EMC in 2005 for $245M. He also published 25 journal articles and invented the world's first neural network robot in 1987 that learns from its own experience and co-authored a book on how the brain achieves motor coordination in 1988.

Edmond Walsh, Wolf, Greenfield & Sacks, P.C. Ed Walsh is a shareholder of the intellectual property specialty firm Wolf, Greenfield and Sacks in Boston, working predominately with clients in the firm�s electrical and computer technologies practice group.  His perspectives are influenced by more than 14 years as in-house counsel for technology companies.   Ed established intellectual property programs for Teradyne, Inc. -- where he served as its first Chief Intellectual Property Counsel -- and Textron Specialty Materials.  Before devoting himself full time to the practice of law, he managed a software development group and attended Stanford University as a Fellow of the National Science Foundation.  He has previously written and spoken on Open Source Software for managers, lawyers and technologists in forums such as  Georgetown University Law Center, Mass. Software Counsel legal issues lecture series, Lawyer�s Weekly and the Embedded Systems Developers conference .

Moderator:

Joseph Sabatini, Managing Partner of the Innovation Network, a specialist consulting firm focused on assisting early stage companies in developing and commercializing technology. His consulting primarily involves business strategy, market development, and strategic alliance building.  Prior to founding the Innovation Network, he was a Director in Arthur D. Little�s, Technology Management Practice.  Earlier, he was the Vice President of Operations for TurboChef Technologies (NASDAQ:OVEN) where he executed a virtual manufacturing strategy moving manufacturing engineering, prototype development and production of units to China and was instrumental in the creation of a $75 million joint development relationship with Maytag Corp. Earlier in his career, he was a consultant in the materials industry for Arthur D. Little.  He has consulted to numerous Fortune 500 companies on the topic of innovation management.  He received a BS in Engineering from Columbia University and an MS in Mechanical Engineering from Northeastern University.