Silicon Flatirons

A Center for Law, Technology, and Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado

The Digital Broadband Migration: The Dynamics of Disruptive Innovation

@ University of Colorado-Boulder
February 13, 2011 - February 14, 2011

The Internet ecosystem - consisting of network providers, application developers, content creators and end users - continues to be a source of disruptive innovation. It provides enormous benefit to consumers everywhere while continuing to present significant challenges to existing business models and to policymakers and regulators. Silicon Flatiron's 2011 Digital Broadband Migration Conference, entitled "The Dynamics of Disruptive Innovation," will focus on the sources and nature of these disruptive advances, how they can be nurtured rather than stifled, and how any negative consequences for consumers can be minimized or averted.

The conference will begin with a tutorial overview of the evolution of the Internet, including recent disruptive developments. The first panel will put these developments in perspective by addressing such questions as: (1) what creates the necessary conditions for innovation in networked industries; (2) how those conditions can be cultivated; and (3) what conditions tend to smother rather than encourage innovation? The second panel will pick up this thread and address alternative governance structures and processes that can be used to create positive conditions for continued innovation while minimizing, for example, the need for counterproductive government intrusion in the market. The third panel will concentrate on the particular challenges faced by the content-based sector and on possible business models that may allow that sector to flourish in a drastically changed environment. The fourth and final panel will return to the issue of governance by focusing on the role that existing, evolved, or new multi-stakeholder entities such as standards groups and self-regulation bodies can play in meeting the twin goals of facilitating continued rapid innovation while providing efficient and effective consumer protection.

Several outstanding keynote speakers will complement the tutorial and the individual panels. Silicon Flatirons looks forward to another successful Digital Broadband Migration Conference and we hope that you will be able to join us February 13-14, 2011.

Further panel and speaker information will be available soon.