Roger La Salle

Roger La Salle is a Director of the Innovation Centre of Victoria (INNOVIC), and holds the Chair of Innovation and Visiting Professor status at the prestigious Queens University in Belfast.

He is a successful entrepreneur who has worked in both the public and private sectors and at top management level in major companies internationally and in Australia. He is also sought after in many circles as a speaker and mentor in new product, services and innovation.

Roger has spent a lifetime with new products and is widely respected as a specialist in creative thinking, innovation and the commercialization of technology. He has been responsible for two successful technology business "start ups" and has invented two high tech products that have achieved international success.

Roger is the creator of "Matrix Thinking" a powerful tool, which shows individuals how to embrace innovation and to find opportunities they never knew existed or were possible. Matrix Thinking presents the thinking "seeds" and "catalysts" of issues to be addressed in a matrix to drive creative thinking in innovation and opportunity creation. The secret lies in the choice of the seeds and catalysts, which have been developed and refined over many years.

He is the author of three books, and is probably the only person to have published a book on a structured approach to finding business opportunities.

Not only does he talk about innovation and creativity, Roger is also actively involved and over the years has created four companies based on his own ideas. In the past two years alone he has lodged more than five patent applications.

A stimulating and motivating speaker, Roger shows organisations how to eliminate the biggest risk in new products - market failure. Roger's presentation topics include: Why most business plans fail; how to mitigate new product risk, finding low risk product opportunities, the innovation matrix, the opportunity matrix and invention.

The link below is commentary taken from his most recent event at the Vistage Malaysia CEO summit:
http://www.nama.com.my/wmv/20080909_T60_BTV-0430PM_3.WMV