Ken Thompson
Ken Thompson is an expert practitioner in the area of bioteaming, swarming, virtual enterprise networks, virtual professional communities and virtual teams and has published two landmark books:
Bioteams: High Performance Teams Based on Nature’s Best Designs
The Networked Enterprise: Competing for the future through Virtual Enterprise Networks
Ken is also founder of an exciting European technology company Swarmteams which provides unique patent-pending bioteaming technologies for all shapes and sizes of groups, social networks, business clusters, virtual/mobile communities and enterprises. Swarmteams enables groups to be more responsive and agile by fully integrating their mobile phones and the web with bioteam working techniques. The latest Swarmteams implementation is SwarmTribes which helps musicians and bands form a unique collaboration with their fans for mutual benefit.
Curriculum Vitae - Ken Thompson
Over a career spanning nearly 30 years, Ken has successfully executed and led numerous technology and change assignments for enterprises of all sizes and sectors including pharmaceuticals, energy, banks, insurance companies, technology companies, multinationals, the European Commission, international standards bodies and a number of major public sector organisations.
As its Managing Director, Ken was responsible for growing VISION Information Consulting in Belfast from a £1M business to a business with annual revenues in excess of £5M and an international blue-chip client base. Prior to joining VISION, Ken was Director with the Institute of Software Engineering (an applied research and technology transfer organisation) where he wrote a book on CASE (Computer Aided Software Engineering) commissioned by the UK government. Before this Ken was IT Manager for Reuters responsible for all systems in UK, Ireland and Scandinavia.
Ken is currently Managing Director of Redburn Consulting, specialising in the area of Virtual Collaboration and is considered one of the foremost experts in this area. His focus is Virtual Communities, Virtual Teams, Virtual Supply Chain and Virtual Networks
Ken holds a first class honours degree in physics and applied maths from Queen's University Belfast and is a Private Pilot. Outside work Ken is father to 4 children, an enthusiastic football fan and a modestly competent but immaculately equipped snowboarder….
Conferences and Papers
Ken has has published a number of academic papers and presented at numerous national and international conferences including:International Conference of "The Competitiveness Institute" (TCI), Tucson (Arizona), August 2001
"The Global Virtual Enterprise – a new way for SMEs to engage in the global economy"
International Confederation of Small Businesses (ICSB) Annual Congress, Belfast (N Ireland), June 2003
"Practical eBusiness for SMEs"
International Conference on Concurrent Enterprising (ICE), Seville (Spain), May 2004.
"A management flight simulator for virtual leadership development"
BIOTEAMS: Fix the 3 killer problems in your business teams without any extra technology
Collaboration in Financial Services Conference, London June 2005
Virtual Enterprise Networks (VENs) - A proven network partnership model for SMEs
The 14th National Quality Conference, Istanbul, Nov. 2005
Virtual Enterprise Networks (VENs) - A proven network partnership model for SMEs
The International Clusters Conference, Istanbul, May 2006
Can software engineering teams adapt biological principles?
SPICE 2006 International Conference, Luxembourg June 2006
Bioteaming: Natural Models for Virtual Teams
Collaborative Technologies Conference (CTC2006), Boston 2006
Bioteams: What can we learn from nature’s social networks
NLab Social Networks Conference, De Montfort University Leicester June 2008
Experience & Assignments
During the first half of 1998 Ken conducted a strategic technology review for VENGROUP, a Yorkshire Forward spin-out company, who were set-up to promote and manage Virtual Enterprise Networks across the Yorkshire and Humber region and internationally. The purpose of the review was to identify how the current technology system would need to adapt to take advantage of important new business/technology trends such as Web 2.0, Social Software, Rich Internet Applications, Mashups, APIs and Service Oriented Architectures.
During summer 2007 Ken was engaged by a major US Consultancy group to bring "bioteams thinking" to a thought-leadership exercise in San Francisco on Knowledge Management on behalf of a US Government agency.
During 2006/2007 Ken was the lead consultant on the Invest NI EClusters programme where he was responsible for incubating and establishing 3 Virtual Enterprise Networks in the NorthWest of Northern Ireland in Construction, Facilities Management and Environmental Technology over a twelve month period. Ken’s VEN web and mobile phone product (VENICE – Virtual Enterprise Network Integrated Collaboration Environment) was used to facilitate network member communications and collaboration.
In late 2005 Ken worked with the Northern Ireland eGovernment Unit to train them up in corporate blogging and assist them with all aspects of the design, development and launch of eGovNI their new corporate blogging platform
Director, FORFAS Report (Irish Business Policy Board)
Ken is co-author of a major published report for the Irish Government on "Innovation Networks in Ireland". This covered business to business and business to research networks and was commissioned to assist policy development in the area of "regional clusters". The report was published in May 2004 and can be downloaded from the FORFAS web-site (http://www.forfas.ie/).
Director, Invest Northern Ireland eBusiness Programme (Invest NI)
Ken was responsible for developing and managing a highly successful eBusiness programme for Invest NI SME companies which engaged with over 200 companies and delivered 80 successful pilot projects covering all aspects of ebusiness over a 4 year period.
Director, InterTradeIreland "DigitalIsland Strategy" (IntertradeIreland)
Ken led the VISION team which developed the "Digital Island" Strategy for Intertradeireland. A centrepiece of this strategy was the identification of the importance of developing and supporting cross-border and all-island networks/clusters underpinned by ebusiness, broadband and virtual collaboration technology.
Independent Reviewer, Peace II Programmes (invest NI)
On behalf of Invest NI Ken has acted as an independent reviewer of PEACE II proposals in the area of business networks and clusters.
Director, Invest Northern Ireland VEN Pilot (Invest NI)
Ken was Director for Invest NI's Virtual Enterprise Networks (VEN) Pilot Project. This project started in June 2004 and involves assisting 3 strategically selected SME networks/supply chains to evolve into successful Virtual Enterprise Networks over a 9-12 month period.
Director, Online NI Smart Communities Pilot (Office of First Minister/Deputy First Minister
(OFMDFM))
This project commenced in April 2004 and involved identifying cross-governmental and voluntary sector working groups which might benefit from easy access to a collaboration platform. The project included configuration and design of the collaboration platform tool, providing training its use and support for the introduction of new virtual working practices.
Director, Yorkshire Forward VEN Pilot
Ken managed the successful delivery of a major pilot programme in Yorkshire & Humber (October 2002 - June 2003) to help SMEs in the Biotech, Marine Engineering and Digital sectors to create virtual collaborative networks to enable them to participate more effectively in the global economy by collectively winning major new customers, entering new markets and developing new products. As a result of the success of this programme Virtual Enterprise Networks became the centrepiece of all supply chain programmes in the region.
External Programme Advisor, Scottish Enterprise
Ken acted as a External Programme Advisor to the SE/Scotland IS Scottish Technology Collaboration Programme (http://www.thestac.org.uk). The STAC programme developed collaborative networks between Scottish Technology Companies and major OEMs and Customers such as SUN, IBM and the Scottish Health Service.
Director, VISION, Internet Banking Service.
Ken was VISION's Director responsible for the development of Ulster Banks highly successful "Anytime" Internet Banking Service.
Chairman & presenter, Software Process Maturity and CASE Tools
Papers presented, sessions chaired at numerous conferences on the themes of CASE (Computer aided software engineering), Software Process Maturity and CASE Integration in UK, Europe and US. Ken has also written a monthly column on software for the Software Development Monitor – one of the UK's foremost Software Technology Newsletters.
Author "CASE and the Issues for IS Management", government sponsored Book
Author of government sponsored Book "CASE and the Issues for IS Management". Author of 3 Institute of Software Engineering Reports – "The CASE Market", CASE Data Integration – The Emerging Standards" and "Practical Quality Improvement using Software Process Maturity".
OTHER
- Development of VISION's methodologies for Rapid Application Development (RAD) and Data Conversion which were used on a number of successful projects
- Provision of expert advice and guidance to Lloyds TSB Bank, Ordnance Survey, Royal & Sun Alliance and the Irish Post Office on Software Quality and the Capability Maturity Model (CMM)
- Chairman of US/International Standards Working Group (Electronic Industries Association (EIA)) on Software Engineering Data Integration which involved all the leading software tool developers and users (e.g. Oracle, Boeing, Nasa…)
- Consultancy to ICL/Fujitsu on its future repository/data dictionary strategy.
- Study for the European Commission into CASE Integration Standards and Software Maintenance problems in the European Banking Industry.
- Lead consultant in study for a major UK bank on its future CASE strategy
- Strategy Planning and Analysis of major business systems in Reuters using IBM's SDM method and IEW Information Engineering
