A CONCISE
BIOGRAPHY
A pioneer of the modern-day internet, Roger has been helping organisations to understand and exploit successive waves of technology for the past 50 years.
ROGER CAMRASS, A PIONEER OF TECHNOLOGY-DRIVEN CHANGE
Over a 50-year career that has centred on work with some of the world’s largest organisations, Roger is an experienced business executive who has been prominent in shaping today’s ‘digital’ world. He is currently Research Director of CIONET International, Europe’s largest community of digital leaders.
PARTICIPATING IN SUCCESSIVE WAVES OF CHANGE
Roger helps to bridge the gap between business and technology. He has worked with Fortune 1000 companies to pioneer new methods and techniques that deliver commercial advantage ahead of the competition.
SOME OF HIS MOST PRESTIGIOUS ACHIEVEMENTS INCLUDE:
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Pioneer of today’s internet while working as an ARPA Research Fellow at MIT in the 1970s. This work fostered a contribution to successive waves of technology-driven innovation from mobile to social media and onto cloud.
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Pioneer of business re-engineering techniques in Europe, working closely with Michael Hammer, Peter Keen, John Thompson and Jim Champy during his career at CSC Index and Arthur D Little.
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Lead Partner at Ernst & Young UK’s e-commerce practice during the 2000 dotcom boom. He subsequently published ‘Atomic: Reshaping the Business Landscape into the New Structures of Tomorrow’, which gave a radical view on the future of business.
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Value architect for multi-million-dollar outsourcing and offshoring contracts that have helped to transform multiple blue-chip IT and business organisations into slimmer, more virtual structures.
LEADING ADVISER AND BUSINESS EXECUTIVE
In addition to shaping and influencing external change, Roger has excelled as a business leader and entrepreneur, and has played an influential role in several major organisations. Specific industry experience includes:
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Group Director of a consulting firm that achieved a full FTSE listing in just 12 years. The company combined syndicated research and consulting services to build a client base of more than 500 CIOs across Europe.
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Managing Director of Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in Europe for five years and Vice President of Global Operations, where he helped launch Nuance Communications, sold to Microsoft for $26 billion.
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Group Director and Head of Business Transformation at Fujitsu Services in Europe for six years, helping to achieve a dramatic turnaround in sales performance and client engagement after the firm’s acquisition of ICL.
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Senior Practice Partner at leading consulting firms, including Ernst & Young (e-commerce), Arthur D Little (business re-engineering), and Wipro Consulting (cloud computing).
RESEARCH AND INNOVATION CHAMPION
Roger’s lifetime professional interest focuses on ‘innovation’ and transforming good ideas into cash. This has inspired several key commercial and thought leadership programmes throughout his career. These include:
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Advisor to governments on the strategic impact of technology on national economic performance, working with Professor Michael Porter of Harvard University. One piece of advisory research was presented to the Dutch parliament in the early 1990s.
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Leader of a global multi-client programme entitled ‘Business in the Third Millennium’. The programme, which was developed during Roger’s time at SRI International, succeeded MIT’s ‘Management in the Nineties’ study.
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Director for a Judge Business School survey into corporate innovation. This study involved research with 12 chairs and chief executives of FTSE 100 companies, including Astra Zeneca, BAA, BT and Legal & General.
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Lead consultant for several new business opportunities, including the formation of the first public call centre in the UK (and a related start-up, Share Link), and building the business case for 3G mobile and the launch of public cloud.
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Helped to create ‘innovation communities’ within large corporations, including Barclays and RSA. These communities were established to challenge conventional ideas and identify new revenue growth initiatives.
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Set up the Fujitsu Executive Institute (FEI) and engaged Sir Brian Pitman to host its activities over a five-year period. The FEI explored Asia as a board-level issue by working with chairs and chief executives of FTSE 100 companies.
ACADEMIC QUALIFICATIONS AND PERSONAL INTERESTS
Roger acquired his bachelor’s degree in electrical sciences from Cambridge University and his master’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, USA.
He has held part-time academic posts at several universities and business schools, including Senior Associate at Judge Business School at Cambridge University, Visiting Fellow at the Engineering Faculty of Bristol University and the Strategic Management Centre at Ashridge School of Management. More recently, he has held visiting professorships at ESADE Business School in Spain and the University of Surrey. Currently, Roger is a visiting scholar in the Department of Humanities at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
He is married with three children and lives in Highgate, North London with his wife, Susi, and Labrador, Rocco.
FUTURE SHOCK
Alvin Toffler has been recognised as the foremost futurist of the twentieth century. He shared a speaking platform with Roger in Vienna in 1998 at a European Union Forum on Business in the Third Millennium.
THE TOYOTA WAY
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Jeffrey Liker brought the concept of lean thinking to the World through his famous book, The Toyota Way. Jeffrey worked with Roger in Europe to apply such thinking to IT Services.
THE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE OF NATIONS
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Professor Michael Porter of Harvard Business School worked with Roger on a strategic national project in 1990. Roger applied the concepts from Michael's book 'The Competitive Advantage of Nations' to the Dutch Economy.
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THE PRACTICE OF MANAGEMENT
Peter Drucker, founder of Management Science, provided an endorsement to Roger Camrass in the cover of his iconic book 'The Practice of Management' after touring Europe together in 1990.