arly in his journalism career, Robert B. Tucker interviewed innovative people — from Dr. Jonas Salk, who discovered the
vaccine for polio, to FedEx founder Fred Smith. In speaking to inventors, entrepreneurs, and other- wise creative individuals, Tucker came to under- stand that being innovative is something that can be learned. Twenty-five years ago, he parlayed that passion for creativity into The Innovation Resource, a company he founded to help individu- als and organizations profit from — rather than be blindsided by — change. “Innovation is about generating fresh ideas
that add value and bringing them to life,” Tucker said in a recent phone interview with Convene. “Innovation is the process by which you grow your business, [yet] many organizations have a process for everything except innovation.” And that includes the meetings industry. “This
may turn out to be a golden age for conferences,” he said, “yet each conference operates in a highly uncertain environment.” Tucker invited an inti- mate group of high-level professionals involved in the conference industry to the Elite Retreat on Aug. 21–23 in Santa Barbara, Calif., to explore how they could develop a process of innovation for their own events. Tucker is quick to point out that he is “an
innovation guy, not a conference guy,” and that for this retreat (and this interview), he wanted to be careful not to “step out beyond my expertise.” But what he does bring to the conversation — and what the Elite Retreat’s 14 participants took away — is a fresh perspective on a changing industry, and some new ideas and tools that all planners can put into practice. He shared some of the group’s insights with Convene shortly after the retreat concluded.
Your retreat focused on “Inventing the Future of the Conference Industry.” What was the impetus behind that? I saw how the conference industry was changing rapidly, disrupting some [events] while rewarding others, and how attendance is declining in some sectors, while exploding in others — for example, TED conferences and those put on by magazines like The Economist, Fortune, and Chief Executive, among many others. The result is that there are more conferences
competing for shrinking budgets and attention spans; there’s this new high-end, exclusive, elite conference tier that commands up to $16,000 per
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‘Senior people want to interact on a peer-to- peer basis with other senior- level people.’
attendee, as does one of the TED conferences. New York magazine reported recently that the typical TED conference rakes in $23 million. Meanwhile, the pressure to do more with less and exceed last year’s numbers is intense for everybody in the industry. So at the retreat, I wanted to create an environment free of the pressures these senior people are normally under, where they could come together and discuss critical issues with peers in other parts of the conference industry whom they might not normally meet.
What criteria did you use to invite participants, and what was the attendee composition? My team and I discovered pretty quickly what high-end conference producers have long ago realized: Senior people want to interact on a peer- to-peer basis with other senior-level people. And they want the environment to be commercial- free and confidential. We knew that we also needed to limit the
number of people to fewer than 20, because the intimacy gets lost if you go higher. We thought of it as an “unconference” in the sense that we involved these producers in creating the agenda. We said, “Here are the issues that have come up as important to discuss, but what do you want to talk about?” We also adopted the Chatham House Rule — everything that is discussed here, in confidence, remains so. We were fortunate in that we attracted at least
one executive from most of the major sectors of the conference industry — for example, top executives from the American Society of Association Execu- tives (ASAE), the CEO and founder of Lincoln Healthcare Events, a for-profit conference orga- nizer, the senior vice president of a major software company, a senior executive from The Conference Board who is in charge of a portfolio of 400 annual meetings, the CEO of the Fluid Power Association, and an executive from the printing industry.
What kind of disruption is the industry experiencing? I thought you said this is a golden age of conferences? It is, but that doesn’t mean a rising tide is
lifting all boats. For example, one conference producer whom we contacted in researching the Elite Retreat revealed to us that her conferences are being disrupted in a strange way. Ten years ago, this conference organization attracted up to 10,000 C-level participants annually who paid top dollar — but now attendance is down to 4,000.