(Tsinghua News Center) Mr. Nick Donofrio, IBM’s Technology and Manufacturing Senior Vice President, visited Tsinghua University on June 14th, and delivered a speech titled “The Value of Innovation” in the Reception Hall of the Main Building.
In the speech, Mr. Donofrio addressed his understanding on the concept of innovation and its values, by reviewing his 40-year experience in the electronic and information science industry.
He said the development of technology had been driving and pushing the advancement in information Science fundamentally, illustrating with the accelerating computing rates in the 20th century.
However, the essential value of the technology innovation “lies in how to apply the technology into the marketplace to solve the business problem”, according to Mr. Donofrio.
“Business insight is the differentiator,” he said.
Mr. Donofrio stated that IBM also shared this perception of the value of innovation:
The value was in the minds of clients, and thus was migrating. That was why the corporation’s focus shifted from the research and development of hardware and software to the customers’ service and solution.
Mr. Donofrio encouraged Tsinghua’s students to discover and think about China’s innovation in the 21st century at the end of his speech.
“One of the most powerful thought is from you,” he said.
Mr. Donofrio answered the questions raised by the seated students ranging the issues of information technology and IBM’s innovation after the speech.
Tsinghua Vice President Gong Ke met with Mr. Donofrio in the I-shaped Hall before the speech, and exchanged the ideas on the cooperation in building information science labs with him.
Mr. Donofrio joined IBM in 1967. He now leads the strategy for developing and commercializing advanced technology across IBM's global operations.
Mr. Donofrio earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1967 and a Master of Science in the same discipline from Syracuse University in 1971. In 1999 he was awarded an honorary doctorate in Engineering from Polytechnic University and in 2002 he received an honorary doctorate in Sciences from the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom.
Reported by Huang Ruixi
Photoed by Guo Haijun
