iNEMI's Innovation Leadership Forum convened leaders from industry, government, and academia to discuss key issues and outline an innovation strategy to focus investments on those areas that would help industry ensure development of the technologies required to maintain growth over the next decade. Participants in the forum agreed that we need a 2005 equivalent of Sputnik - a wake-up call to rally industry and spur innovation.  It must have social value - perhaps energy, healthcare or security/safety. We must define goals with specific timelines. Finally, we must convince the public of the importance of supporting programs that will help foster innovation, from building our educational systems to providing seed funding for embryonic programs.

iNEMI distilled the many perspectives from this forum into a list of critical technology needs:

• Resilient architectures
• Extreme system integration
• Modular design, validation and test framework
• Sensors and their integration into systems
• A new semiconductor "switch"
• Fast design and customization
• Thermal management
• Advanced materials
• Advanced manufacturing processes
• Increased communications bandwidth

In addition to identifying specific technology needs, forum participants also developed the following innovation vision:

• Innovation is driven by the consumer, and it's about the killer experience, not the killer application.
• Innovation links invention to the market and must have social value.
• Concept of "open innovation" - collaboration is a must, and that collaboration takes various forms, such as customers and suppliers sharing risks and organizing cooperative efforts that involve industry, universities, and government.
• Intellectual property protection and management are key.
• Interoperability, open source, and standards are also critical.
• Products must be on-demand - what/when/where you need it.
• Consumer electronics demand shorter cycle times.

 Final presentations
Presentations are available to iNEMI members and individuals who participated in the forum. If you attended the Innovation Leadership Forum and are not an iNEMI member, please call +1 703-835-0330 or email help@inemi.org for information about how to access the presentations.