Featured Session: The Innovation Engine You’ve Never Heard of: Your Neighbor

Traditional corporate innovation keeps ideas locked away until launch, but GE Appliances innovation arm, FirstBuild, has flipped the script—inviting passionate enthusiasts to co-create products from day one. The result is a 93% failure rate that just so happens to drive million-dollar successes like the Opal Nugget Ice Maker, which raised $2.7 million in crowdfunding after the community helped shape its development. This session will explore how major corporations can harness the power of co-creation, where rough transparency builds more trust than polished presentations, and where your best product ideas might come from a Reddit user with a 3D printer. Learn how FirstBuild proves that building in public, failing fast, and letting communities vote with their wallets creates better products than closed-door development—and why the future of innovation looks less like a pipeline and more like a playground.