Pieter Geldenhuys is an internationally renowned futurist and expert in the field of Innovation and Technology Strategy.  He is the Director of the Institute for Technology Strategy and Innovation, a boutique consultancy focusing on University accredited courses in Technology Strategy and Innovation management. Over the past decade, he has guided more than 3000 students and more than 80 innovation projects within South Africa's largest technology companies. 

 He was the previous Vice-Chair of the Innovation Focus Group at the International Telecommunication Union in Geneva, Switzerland. He is also a member of the South African Academy of Arts and Science. He currently holds the title of Lecturer Extraordinaire in Technology Strategy at North-West University, where he lectured a Technology Strategy course to MBA students for more than a decade. 

He believes the only way to effectively predict the future is to create it.

Email: pieter@itsi.org.za
Mobile: +27 (82) 335 2711

 

Steve has backgrounds in education and business and has value propositions of operational efficiency and product leadership. He worked at the HSRC, University of South Africa and at Spellbound before joining the Institute. He is currently in charge of Product development and Project Management at ITSI.

 

Mobile: +27 (82) 492 6296

Professor Peter Wentworth is based in the Computer Science Department at Rhodes University, where he lectures in distributed web technologies, multimedia, and functional languages. He worked in the computer industry before taking up an academic career. He is a passionate proponent of the craftsmanship approach to software development, with special interest in "serious gaming" for educational purposes. His company, 7-Fountains Digital, provides software, training, and consulting to industry.

Mandla Adonisi holds lecturing responsibilities in the areas of Organisation Development Leadership and Strategy at the Gordon Institute of Business Science. Prior to this he lectured on a full-time basis in the fields of Organisational Behaviour, Organisation Development, HR Management and Strategy at the Wits Business School and the Public Development Management School.

He is a visiting lecturer at the School for Business Leadership, UNISA, and teaches Change Management on the Harvard/WBS Senior Executive Programme. He is a lead facilitator on the Leadership Development Programme run by the Agricultural Economics Department at the University of Zimbabwe. In 1992, Mandla was awarded the British Council Fellowship for post-graduate studies in business administration at Aston University (UK). In 1998, he received the Executive Development Diploma from Northwestern University: Kellogg School of Business in Chicago.

Prof. Rasoava Rijamampianina is a faculty at the Wits Business School (South Africa). Prior to this appointment, he was a senior research associate at Hokkaido University (Japan), an auditor-consultant at Delta Audit Deloitte & Touche (Madagascar), and the overseas consultant of the Indian Ocean Resources for Quality. Rija's research and teaching interests include diversity management, organisational change, and human capital management. His work has resulted in numerous publications in scholarly journals and international conference proceedings. Rija is a member of several international academic associations.

 

E-mail: rijiamampianina.r@wbs.wits.ac.za

Prof Maritz was the Director of Financial Strategy at the Graduate SBL. He is actively involved in practice as a public chartered accountant and auditor. He serves on the board of directors of a number of companies. Prof Maritz further consults and lectures in the fields of strategic financial management and taxation.

Barry Irwin obtained Masters degree in Computer Science from Rhodes University in 2001 in the field of network bandwidth and traffic management and visualisation. Post graduation he joined a multinational Wireless application Service provider, operating in the Mobile content market, and spent three years developing a custom firewall solution for the London based Group. He also implemented and managed the deployment of this system alongside the Groups operating platforms in Indonesia and Thailand in co-operation with MWEB/ MIH Group, and additional remote deployments in Greece, UK, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa and Australia. He has appeared as a security consultant to Carte Blanche on Wireless Security. In 2003 he joined the Rhodes University Computer Science where he currently hold the position of Senior Lecturer. At Rhodes, he focuses on Postgraduate research into Network technologies and applications of Information Security. He is also the founder of a consulting company focusing on the application of Internet Technologies for Secondary Schools and SME organisations. He is currently completing his PhD on the modeling and management of Internet Malware.

Over the past 17 years Kevin Horsley has been analysing the mind and its capacity for brilliance. He is one of only a few people in the world to have been awarded the title "International Grandmaster of Memory"  and is a World record holder. Kevin is also a professional presenter, an international trainer, coach, consultant and author. He trains and teaches that the joy of learning and creativity is available to all people.

Mr Ajay Ranjan Mishra is the Global Head of Business Development for New Growth Markets for Nokia Siemens Networks. Ajay graduated in 1997 from the University of Delhi with Masters of Technology in Microwave Electronics. Since his graduation, he has been working in Nokia Networks and has worked in India, Finland, UK, US and Singapore. His decade of experience ranges from Research to Business Development, Product Management to Project Management in six continents and more than three dozen countries globally.

Ajay has authored more than half a dozen research papers in the Technical and Management domain, published both internally and internationally. He has also authored two books on Cellular Network Design & Optimisation that have been published by John Wiley & Sons, UK. Ajay is an invited council member on the Telecommunication Advisors Council, GLG,  New York (USA) and is a member of the ITU's Asia Pacific Telecommunity. He is regularly invited by the industry and universities to speak on topics related to mobile technology. Ajay's current interests are issues associated with development of the cellular network globally, both technically and commercially with emphasis on New Growth Markets such as India, Asia, and Africa. He is currently based in India.

 

Edmond is part of a strategic marketing team in the applications division of Alcatel-Lucent. His role includes exploring and developing value propositions as well as exploring proven service launches in early mover markets. In this capacity, he is one of the key contributors to the Alcatel-Lucent IMS strategy. In this work, a lot of focus is given to understand the business benefits which service providers can derive from applying advanced technologies such as IMS. During the past ten years, Edmond has travelled the globe involved in numerous customer contacts and projects giving him a unique insight in real customer needs around the globe. Especially in the field of IMS, Edmond has numerous customer contacts with strategy, product groups and technical groups of service providers giving him a unique view of how IMS is evolving from a dream into reality and is becoming a real revenue opportunity.

Thomas Magedanz is full professor at the Technical University Berlin in the field of converging internet and telecommunication infrastructures. In addition, he is director of the "Next Generation Networks Infrastructures" division at the Fraunhofer Institute FOKUS in Berlin, Germany, which provides successfully under his guidance a set of pioneering technology and services testbeds in the field of Next Generation Networks (NGN) since 2002. He is an internationally recognised expert in the areas of Intelligent Networks (IN) and Open Service Delivery Platforms. He is a member of the IEEE, editorial board, member of several journals, and the author of more than 200 papers/articles. He is an regularly invited tutorial speaker at major international telecommunications events and conferences.

Ken Sexton has 40 years of experience within the Telecommunications industry. He spent 36 years within Telstra working within Engineering Network Planning, Resource Management, Vendor Management and new technology design and delivery roles. He has worked in Alcatel (and now Alcatel-Lucent) since 2003 on Network solutions for Telstra and Telecom New Zealand, and more recently on Migration strategies, tools and processes for Telstra's NGN transformation.