HP sponsors 5000 millennials to gather in Boston | HP Innovation Journal

Every year since 2011 Forbes selects the 30 most influential young entrepreneurs, game changers and world class innovators in 20 different sectors ranging from Tech to Sports under 30 years of age. This year HP has helped to bring them together at the Forbes Under 30 Summit in Boston. 5000 millennials from around the world, came together to network, get inspired, and collaborate to tackle the challenges of Rapid Urbanization through a Hack-a-thon. HP provided these millennials with the inspiration and tools to reinvent and help make life better for everyone, everywhere.

HP has reinvented itself almost every decade for the past 50 years, and looks to the future as part of everyday business. We believe the group of millennials attending the Forbes Under30 Summit are the future, and can help solve some of the world’s most pressing challenges. This is why HP sponsored the biggest Forbes Under 30 Summit to date in Boston, a city packed with college students and young graduates who fit squarely into the Millennial generation. The summit was fertile ground for innovation, collaboration, and inspiration, in an atmosphere of creativity and social commitment.

Four stages across Boston, over 5000 participants, four days of intense speaker-packed program: this year’s Summit was the biggest and most ambitious to date. In its third year, the Under 30 Summit gathered thousands of the world’s current and future leaders in every field. During the summit they had the opportunity to engage with speakers like Sir Richard Branson; Ashton Kutcher; Jessica Alba; Chrissy Teigen; Deepak Chopra; Bobby Flay; Adam Neumann, Co-Founder and CEO of WeWork; Olympian swimmer Michael Phelps, and many more. The agenda did not lack fun moments either, with a Music Festival welcoming the attendees on the first night, a pub crawl in an iconic district of Boston, and a food-festival where the best Forbes Under 30 chefs competed to win votes of the attendees.

HP’s Shane Wall, Chief Technology Officer and Global Head of HP Labs, addressed an enthusiastic crowd of about 1000 attendees at the Tech Stage about an emerging technology that futurists expect to be a fixture in urban skies: drones. Wall was joined on stage by Ian Cinnamon, technology advisor, entrepreneur, author, and Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, who built—and then flew—a drone on stage at the historic Majestic Theater at Emerson College. Wall himself has a collection of more than a dozen of the flying machines—they are devices that might spark a new idea, product or business.

On the same Tech Stage, Alexander Clark, an under-30 HP Innovation and Experiences Engineer, took part in Meet the Next Edisons. In this session, Alex, together with an expert panel, judged mind-blowing innovations and inventions and geniuses behind them.

Rapid Urbanization is shaping future cities and communities. As the global population continues to rise, resources within cities are becoming scarce and urbanization is taking a toll on the environment. At Boston City Hall, the central gathering point and location of the summit, the HP Experience allowed attendees to walk through an interactive mock city with mini-stations on Infrastructure, Education, Healthcare, and Business. Inspired by that experience, summit attendees could select a problem facing Boston and enter their ideas to solve it at five different HP stations across Boston. Those ideas were then developed at the HP Hack-a-thon ‘Reinvent the City’. Chief Sustainability Officer Nate Hurst and HP millennial mentors helped summit attendees pitch the best proposals in areas ranging from healthcare to mobility to Boston municipal decision makers.

The HP ‘Reinvent the City’ challenge harnessed the great intellectual capital of these game changers to help solve urbanization challenges all over the world and leave the city of Boston better than we found it.

As a company that has innovation and reinvention at its heart, HP has always encouraged young employees to take positions of responsibility and believes they represent the future of the company. It is not by chance in early 2016 Forbes selected HP’s own employee Giulia Pastorella as a 30 Under 30 honoree for Europe in Law and Policy. Giulia leads HP’s government relations in UK, Italy, and the Nordic countries. She has a PhD in European politics from the LSE and has worked in public affairs, journalism, and academia as well as found her own company. She said: “At HP it is not age or seniority, but ideas that matter. Working in an environment that values innovation and diversity is very fulfilling. I am proud that HP recognizes the added value millennials like me can bring and sponsored the Forbes summit.”

Giulia is just an example of the next generation of leaders and a generation focused on social impact. Millennials are a diverse group that align with HP’s mission and HP is providing the brightest young entrepreneurs, breakout talents, and change agents the tools to enable them to reinvent and help make life better for everyone, everywhere.

Giulia is just an example of the next generation of leaders and a generation focused on social impact. Millennials are a diverse group that align with HP’s mission and HP is providing the brightest young entrepreneurs, breakout talents, and change agents the tools to enable them to reinvent and help make life better for everyone, everywhere.

HP’s unique value proposition, bridging the digital and physical world and delivering innovative products, is helping business-minded Millennials and change-agents make a difference. HP is proud to have engaged with a new generation of thinkers and innovators in Boston, a city with a legacy of innovation, education and technology. HP is reinventing itself, and ultimately, helping make life better for everyone, everywhere by providing HP Technology to millennials intent on making the world a better place to live. We will keep looking to the next generation of entrepreneurs and thought leaders to provide ideas and areas of focus to drive new innovation and bring solutions to future challenges.

It was the perfect forum for HP to touch and engage with some of the world’s most influential millennials and future leaders in major fields.

HP played a powerful role in this extraordinary event through unique activations, challenging attendees of the summit to come up with ideas to help solve issues related to rapid urbanization. At different venues all over Boston, HP stations with laptops were set up for participants to provide their ideas and solutions.

HP’s held a large presence at the Forbes Under 30 Village, where attendees could engage with HP’s consumer products, as well as the educational Sprout by HP desktop computer, which served as the central hub of its Idea-A-Thon. The activations culminated when HP hosted a Hack-a-thon where eight Forbes Under 30 teams worked together to develop solutions to the eight questions that were posed to participants. Each team tackled a different Megatrend problem from making cities biker- and pedestrian-friendly to overhauling healthcare in the U.S.

“On behalf of everyone at Forbes, we want to thank HP for its partnership at the Forbes Under 30 Summit. HP made an impact on the entire Forbes Under 30 community…a community of influencers who aim to change the world for good.” said Janett Haas, SVP of Sales at Forbes Media.

From unique activations to demos of drones as a solution to city challenges to a “Hack-a-thon for Good”, HP left a lasting impression on some of the globe’s most influential young business leaders and disruptors.

“The Forbes Under 30 Summit was just the beginning of a strategic relationship between HP and Forbes. We look forward to the continued success of our joint partnership.” added Haas.

(This Special Report by Giulia Pastorella, Government Relations UK & Italy, HP; Lisa Baker, Director of Marketing, HP; Cheryl Walter, Manager of Marketing, HP)