WAUKESHA – Sixteen major companies will take part in about 200 “speed
dating” meetings with 54 emerging companies during the inaugural Wisconsin Tech
Summit, to be held April 7 at the GE Healthcare Institute in Waukesha.
Produced by the Wisconsin Technology Council and partners
that include the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., the Tech Summit will
provide an organized way for young companies and corporations with a national
and global footprint to meet and explore likely business relationships around
technology needs and innovation.
Those relationships might include research and development
partnerships, direct investments, strategic partnerships as vendors or sales
outlets, even merger and acquisition.
Major companies and private institutions taking part are:
AT&T, American Family Insurance, Aurora Health Care, BloodCenter of
Wisconsin, Direct Supply, Faith Technologies, GE Healthcare, HP Enterprise
Services, IBM, Intel, Johnson Controls Inc., Kraft, Plexus, Rockwell
Automation, Runzheimer International and TASC. Emerging companies taking part
will be announced at a later date.
While larger, more general, events can produce such
business-to-business interactions, and often do, a targeted approach allows
major companies and young companies alike to be efficient in exploring ideas
and possible partnerships.
A broader goal of the conference is to fuel two important
sectors of the Wisconsin economy – its major firms, which are often world
leaders, and its early stage sector, which is a source of innovation but often
disconnected from the right markets and potential users of those ideas. Other event
features:
– Addresses by major speakers who will bring
perspectives that will be helpful for major companies as well as emerging
firms. David Krakauer, director of
the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, will speak over lunch. The summit will
close with a presentation by MaryAnn
Wright, who leads the Power Solutions’ global engineering and product
development arm of Johnson Controls Inc., and UW-Milwaukee Chancellor Mike Lovell, who has been named the
next president of Marquette University.
– “Office
Hours” meetings and presentations, which will be available to all participants
during those times in which they are not scheduled for individual meetings.
– An opening panel discussion that will help set
the stage by affording major companies an opportunity to talk generally about
their goals, needs and emerging markets.
Sponsors are: American Family Insurance, BMO Harris Bank, GE
Healthcare, WEDC, Rockwell Automation, AT&T, American Transmission Co.,
Baird Capital, BloodCenter of Wisconsin, the Center for Technology
Commercialization, J.H. Findorff & Son, HP Enterprise Services, K&L
Gates, The Milwaukee Institute, Madison Gas & Electric Co., Mortenson
Construction, the UW-Madison Office of Corporate Relations, UW-Milwaukee and
the Wisconsin Health and Educational Facilities Authority.
Limited sponsorship and registration opportunities remain.
For more information, contact jsawatzki@wisconsintechnologycouncil.com.
;
