Alistair Davidson

Alistair Davidson has worn three different hats in his recent career: software CEO and business developer, consultant, and part time author. His entrepreneurial career includes software development for both planning decision support products and large software tools. He has worked in and consulted to a wide range of industries including international consulting firms, large and small high tech firms, media and publishing, financial services, healthcare service and equipment providers on a wide range of topics including: software development, business and product strategy, innovation and performance improvement. He has also worked as a strategic facilitator, mentor, venture capitalist and head of an incubator.

His first job was a financial position with a Citibank affiliate and his second a treasury position with Harlequin (Mills & Boon in the UK), the romance publisher, so he likes to joke that in his initial career he moved from the romance of high finance to the finance of high romance. He has developed over a dozen software products including three first of breed software products: the first strategic expert system with 3,000 rules about business strategy that advised users on their business and product strategy; a leading edge networked training simulation he designed and used to teach hundreds of telecom executives how to cooperate internally and compete in a world of converging technologies; and, a novel highly configurable information warehouse and business intelligence product using object oriented database technology.

In addition to Innovation Zeitgeist, Alistair's publications include Seizing the Future (with Ralph Fisher) on industrial policy, strategy and technology, Riding the Tiger (with Harvey Gellman and Mary Chung) on best practices in information management strategy and project management, Turn Around!: A brief guide to starting and turning around software and Internet companies. He has also written two poetry collections, Silicon Valley Poems (now in its second edition) and Velvet Stride: More Silicon Valley Poems, two collections of poems written upon the event of his move to Silicon Valley and a period of poor sleep. His most recent Kindle publication is Zombie Marketing (with Laura Klemme) about the marketing opportunities for digital content by anticipating inheritance and transfer issues. Most digital content is currently not transferable which is a fact little appreciated by its users.

He is a contributing editor for Strategy & Leadership magazine and has occasionally designed/taught MBA courses in three countries. His articles have been published in a variety of publications including The Globe & Mail, AI Magazine, University of Western Ontario's Business Quarterly/Ivey Business Journal, A.T. Kearney's Executive Agenda, Strategy & Leadership magazine and various corporate web sites.

Alistair was born in the UK and lived there until he was 14, completed high school at the University of Toronto Schools, and studied at Harvard where he obtained his undergraduate degree and his MBA. During college, he worked for one summer in Kiel in Schleswig-Holstein. His current hobbies include kayaking, tennis and photography, which makes him sound a whole lot more athletic than he is. He lives in Mountain View, California.