| Event Speakers
Ross O'Brien
Ross O’Brien is the Hong Kong Director of the Economist Corporate Network, a membership-based business advisory programme for senior executives of multinationals operating in Asia. In that role, Ross brings over twenty years of Asian industry and economic analysis to bear in providing decision makers with insight and advice on the future of the region—and what it means for their business.
Ross engages with the boards and senior strategy teams of dozens of companies across Asia every month, and speaks at and moderates over 100 events every year. Most of Ross’ speaking engagements are for audiences of technology decision-makers, or of professionals interested in the implications of information and communications technology (ICT) developments on their business strategy. At the Economist Corporate Network, Ross focuses his research and analysis on Asia’s Innovation Economy—the intersection of technology development and the region’s broader social and economic development policies. He studies the way Asian technology companies build and sell globally, and the ways countries and companies leverage technology investment for competitive success (or how they’ve failed in doing so).
Core topics of interest for Ross include exploring the ways ‘utility’ ICT models will be adopted to meet the challenges of a slower-growing world economy, and how mobile communication diffusion in Asia can help meet national development objectives.
Ross’ talks on innovation Asian economies are grounded in over two decades of experience in the region’s technology markets. Ross began his career as a telecommunications analyst, covering network infrastructure and enterprise systems markets for the emerging market telecoms consultancy Pyramid Research, in the US and Singapore. He’s worked as an Asian marketing manager for the data switch vendor StrataCom, and as a consultant with AT&T Solutions in the US and Indonesia. He also ran the ICT practice for the Asian market entry consulting partnership Intercedent. His project work has been varied over the years, from rural wireless communications companies in Bangladesh, to e-government NGOs in Indonesia, and managed network service providers in southern China.
Based in Hong Kong for the past 12 years, Ross has an AB in Asian Studies and Anthropology from Dartmouth College, and an MBA from the University of California at Berkeley’s Haas School. He is conversant in Mandarin and Indonesian.
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