Designer Scott Wilson headlines conference

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Scott Wilson ’91, founder of Minimal Inc. and former global director at Nike, is the keynote speaker at the RIT Entrepreneurs Conference on Oct. 18.

Have you ever heard of the LunaTik Touch Pen, a combination roller ball pen and digital stylus, or the TikTok band that turns Apple Inc.’s iPod Nanos into wristwatches?

Both products are the brainchild of RIT alumnus Scott Wilson, founder of Chicago-based Minimal Inc. and former global director at Nike, who says he looks forward to sharing the successes, failures and insights of his entrepreneurial design journey as the keynote speaker at the RIT Entrepreneurs Conference on Oct. 18.

The 10th annual conference at Rochester Institute of Technology is sponsored by Toshiba and hosted by Saunders College of Business. The event will be held from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the RIT Campus Center; Wilson’s keynote address is scheduled for 1 p.m. in Ingle Auditorium.

Since graduating from RIT in 1991 with a degree in industrial design, Wilson has become a design leader in organizations such as IDEO, Thomson Consumer Electronics, Fortune Brands and Motorola. Since founding Minimal in 2007, he has created a constant flow of award-winning, commercially successful products.

“Scott is one of the leaders in the current trend of employing design skills to build businesses,” says Richard DeMartino, associate professor in Saunders College and director of the Albert J. Simone Center for Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

“He also has pioneered the use of crowdsourcing tools (i.e. Kickstarter) to fund those initiatives. We are very pleased that he can come and share his experiences with our students at RIT.”

The interactive conference sessions include: Starting a Business, Social Entrepreneurship, MAGIC (the new digital media research center at RIT—Media, Arts, Games, Interaction, Creativity), Funding, Social Media Presentation, Urban Entrepreneurship, Birth of a Business, Top 10: Marketing, IP and Patents, Industrial Design and Starting a Business in the Software and IT Fields.

The conference is open to the public and the cost, including a boxed lunch, is $25. The event is free for RIT alumni, students, faculty and staff—with a box lunch fee of $10. Online registration is available at the RIT Entrepreneurs Conference website or call Dana Pierce at 585-475-2199.