Each year the iRobot Board of Directors and senior management participate in a day-long off-site strategy planning session. Today we listened to briefs by the former President of Bose and a colleague regarding their entry into the Chinese market, a professor at the University of New Hampshire on the cultural underpinnings of intellectual property theft in China, and President Obama’s Cyber Security Czar on threats in a networked digital age. We also heard from a board member on trends in consumer spending in the current economic environment and finally a look at defense spending projections. Following these presentations, we worked in small teams to formulate major strategic themes for iRobot for the next 3-5 years. Afterwards, a large subset of the participants shared dinner together and I enjoyed getting to know many of them better.