Walter Hehl - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Walter Hehl studied physics at the University of Stuttgart and received the degree of a Dr. rer.nat. ibidem in 1972. For many years he was in the IBM Laboratory in Böblingen, Germany, responsible for advanced developments and innovation for systems and software. After a sabbatical year as professor for software technology at the Technical University of Dresden, he became the content manager for IBM’s European Industry Solutions Lab, first in Stuttgart (Germany), then directly in the IBM Research Lab Zurich. This Industry Solutions Lab is the European executive briefing center of the Research Division of IBM and a global meeting place of executives and politicians with IBM researchers and consultants. In this function, he was responsible for the technologies and solutions used to represent actual trends in the IT industry. He conducted about 600 innovation workshops on the future with executives from companies and organizations from all over the world and gave subject lectures in many places worldwide.

From this unique experience in physics, IT and business, with researchers and developers, consultants and business leaders, he wrote several books (in German) on very different subjects:

• IT Trends, in German. Publisher ETH VdF Zurich,
• Innovation Management in Large Enterprises, in German.
Publisher Hanser, Munich.
• Information Growth and Uncertainty, in German, Publisher ETH VdF,
Zürich,
• Software and Philosophy, in German, Publisher Springer Heidelberg.

Currently, he writes a critical biography on Galileo Galilei.

He is also the author of many scientific papers and popular articles on Information Technology and Innovation. He holds within IBM the 3rd plateau for patent disclosures.
Currently he is mainly interested in the interactions between computer science and philosophy, in the future (and the history) of IT and science.

Walter Hehl is retired and lives in Thalwil near Zurich in Switzerland.

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