ICWE 2008 - Invited Keynote Speaker: Richard Schwartz

Richard Schwartz
Former Senior Vice-President of Strategy and Technology, Openwave

Crossing the Chasm - Research to Commercial

Whether looking for commercial adoption of research ideas or thinking of taking the plunge in starting a new company, Schwartz discusses key factors and decisions impacting ultimate success. He borrows anecdotes from his own journey in forming venture-capital-backed startups and managing public company product portfolios.

Short Bio

Richard Schwartz has repeatedly created and led new organizations to innovate and develop software which has had significant impact on the market. Most recently, Schwartz has been Senior Vice-President of Strategy and Technology for Openwave, responsible for strategic directions and mergers/acquisitions. He joined Openwave as a result of the acquisition of his former company, SoloMio, where he was CEO. Prior to founding SoloMio, he was senior vice president of technology at Vignette Corporation. He joined Vignette in June 1999 via the acquisition of his company, Diffusion, where he was founder and CEO. Prior to Diffusion, he was chief technology officer and senior vice president of technology for Borland International during the period of revenue growth from $30M to $650M. At Borland, Schwartz was responsible for overall product and technology strategy. From 1990-93 at Borland, Richard Schwartz created and developed the pan-European business and the Paris-based European Development Center. Schwartz joined Borland via the acquisition of his company Ansa Software. He co-founded Ansa Software and was the co-creator of Paradox, the first relational database software that was widely used by business professionals and sold over 10 million copies.
Schwartz holds a PhD in Computer Science from UCLA. After completing his PhD, he was a visiting professor in Applied Mathematics at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, and then served as senior computer scientist at Stanford Research Institute (SRI International) prior to founding his first company. He is the author of numerous patents and publications and has served on a variety of industry and corporate advisory boards. He is current Board member of two technology companies and two startup incubators, in both the United States and Israel.

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