Speaker Bios

Don Tapscott

Chief Executive, New Paradigm, & Author, WIKINOMICS: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything

Don Tapscott, one of the world's leading authorities on business strategy, is Chief Executive of the international think tank New Paradigm, founded in 1993. New Paradigm produces groundbreaking research focused on the role of technology in productivity, business design, effectiveness and competitiveness. New Paradigm recently completed a $4 million investigation of how firms will innovate in the 21st Century entitled "IT and Competitive Advantage," funded by 22 global corporations.

Tapscott is also an internationally sought authority, consultant and speaker on business strategy andorganizational transformation. His clients include top executives of many of the world's largest corporations and government leaders from many countries. The Washington Technology Report says he is one of the most influential media authorities since Marshall McLuhan. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Management, Joseph L. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. Tapscott has authored or co-authored ten widely read books on the application of technology in business. His new book, co-authored with Anthony Williams, is WIKINOMICS: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything was published in late Fall 2006.

Don Tapscott regularly contributes articles and opinion pieces to North American newspapers and magazines, such as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Business 2.0, and USA Today, and is a columnist for enRoute. His earlier books include THE DIGITAL ECONOMY: Promise and Peril in the Age of Networked Intelligence (McGraw-Hill, New York, 1996), one of the best selling books about technology in business ever, appearing on a number of bestsellers lists including the New York Times business book list. It had a run of seven months on the Business Week bestsellers list. It has been translated into 20 languages.

Deeply committed to the issue of mental health, Don Tapscott is a former member of the Board of Trustees at the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry and was Chair of the Centered on Hope Campaign for the Center for Addiction and Mental Health Foundation. He is a founding member and a member of the Committee of Advisers of the Business & Economic Roundtable on Addiction & Mental Health. He and his wife, Ana Lopes, are the benefactors of the Tapscott Chair in Schizophrenia Studies at the University of Toronto. He is also involved extensively in the transformation of education, working with many universities, school boards and Educational Secretaries and Ministers around the world. He was Chair of the 1999-2001 Trent University Beyond Our Walls Capital Fundraising Campaign. Don Tapscott holds a B.Sc. in Psychology and Statistics, an M.Ed. specializing in Research Methodology, and a Doctor of Laws (Hon) granted from the University of Alberta in 2001 and from Trent University in 2006.