Dr Alan Shepherd

Alan has had a long and varied IT career, with a background in research, innovation, technology assessment, and large scale contracting.   He has held senior technology management appointments in both public and private sectors, and recently has specialised in highlighting the growing business impact of emerging technologies.  He has been responsible for many major projects and investment decisions, and has considerable experience of IT-supported and IT-driven business change programmes.  He is very familiar with the difficulty of implementing change that affects workplace culture and tradition, a challenge that’s still very much with us today.  Alan is a Chartered Engineer, and has served as a member of the Advisory Board of the Intel Corporation, and as a Council Member of EURIM and of the Parliamentary IT Committee.

Interview with Sir Andrew Hopper

Andy Hopper studied computer science at Swansea under Professor David Aspinall then did his PhD in Cambridge where he worked on the Cambridge Ring.  His LAN company came to the attention of Acorn Computers and was taken into Acorn in 1979.   Hopper was appointed managing director of the Olivetti Cambridge Research lab in 1986.  As MD he helped more than 10 venture operations become independent companies under the benign eye of Olivetti.  On the closure of the lab Hopper focused on his professorship at Cambridge where he developed a strategy to get over 200 ventures from Cambridge University into the market.