PROVIDENCE – The nonprofit Business Innovation Factory today announced the first six of 25 planned “storytellers” for its fifth annual Collaborative Innovation Summit. During the two-day event this October, each will take to the stage for 15 minutes to share a personal tale of how they turned an idea into an innovation.

The BIF-5 storytellers will include:

• Bill Buxton: Principal researcher at Microsoft Research, and a past researcher at Xerox PARC, professor at the University of Toronto and chief scientist at Alias Research and SGI Inc., he is the author of “Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design.”

• Jonah Lehrer: An editor-at-large for Seed magazine and contributing editor at Radio Lab and Scientific American Mind, he is a journalist, Rhodes Scholar, researcher and cook who has worked in the lab of Nobel Prize–winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel and in the kitchen of restaurants including Le Cirque and Le Bernardin.

• John Maeda: A longtime advocate of integrating technology, education and the arts, he is the new president of Rhode Island School of Design, former associate director of research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s media lab and author of “The Laws of Simplicity.” Maeda has been ranked by Esquire magazine among the 75 most influential people of the 21st century.

• Carne Ross: The former senior British diplomat who resigned over the Iraq war, and the author of “Independent Diplomat: Dispatches from an Unaccountable Elite,” he now runs the world’s first nonprofit diplomatic advisory group for marginalized groups and nations.

• Michael Samuelson: The president and CEO of The Health and Wellness Institute, he is a mountain climber, breast cancer survivor and longtime advocate of workplace wellness as a way to control health care costs. He also is the author of “Voices From the Edge: Life Lessons From the Cancer Community.”

• Ethan Zuckerman: An engineer, activist and academic, he is the founder of Geekcorps, a nonprofit corps that pairs volunteers from high-tech companies with businesses in emerging nations; co-founder of Global Voices, an international citizen media network that offers training in podcasting and videocasting throughout the developing world; a fellow at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society; and the author of a blog entitled My Heart’s in Accra. In 2002, he was honored by MIT's Technology Review magazine with its Technology in Service of Humanity Award.

(Speakers at BIF-4 – held at Trinity Repertory Company Oct. 15 and 16 (READ MORE) – included John Abele, leader of the Grunion expedition and founder of Boston Scientific Corp.; Tony Hsieh, founder and CEO of online shoe store Zappos.com; and Frans Johansson, author of “The Medici Effect.”)

BIF-5 is slated for Oct. 7 and 8 at Trinity Rep in downtown Providence. Co-hosts will be Bill Taylor, founding editor of Fast Company magazine and co-author of “Mavericks at Work,” returning for a third straight year; and Bruce Nussbaum, a contributing editor at BusinessWeek magazine, making his second BIF appearance.

“Registrations for BIF-5 are pouring in and folks are taking advantage of the early registration rate,” BIF said today. And with only 300 tickets remaining, the event appears headed for its usual sold-out crowd.

The Business Innovation Factory (BIF) is a nonprofit entity exploring business-model innovation, seeking to move ideas from concept to execution as quickly and cost-effectively as possible. For more information about BIF and its annual Collaborative Innovation Summit, or to register for BIF-5, go to www.BusinessInnovationFactory.com/bif-5.