Dave is a multidisciplinary executive with experience ranging from strategic way finding to scientific instrument development. He brings over 30 years of experience creating new ventures at the intersection of emerging technologies, business opportunities, and customer needs to his work at Mach49. Leveraging his background as an instructor at Stanford and UC Berkeley, Dave cultivates dynamic new paradigms of training and distance learning in leading the Mach49 Growth Institute, transforming a global network of professionals into venture builders and venture investors.
Working with client teams, Dave guides intrapreneurs to find new and disruptive ways of doing business, deliver innovative products and services to the market, and foster a culture of innovation to maintain market leadership. He enjoys engaging with small interdisciplinary teams to build businesses that were not imaginable just 5 or 10 years ago, and feels the magic when those teams foresee the implications of technical advances and visualize truly new opportunities. Dave lives for those moments.
Throughout his 25 years in leadership at IDEO, most recently as Director of Technology Strategy, Dave led teams around the world to create new ventures for organizations like Cisco and Johns Hopkins. With roots in electromechanical engineering, he built and led a successful business unit called Smart Products that focused exclusively on electromechanical systems with embedded controls. He and his 35-person team provided the market with full-service design and development of embedded systems by assembling an interdisciplinary staff of human factors experts, interaction designers, and electrical, mechanical, and firmware engineers. Prior to IDEO, Dave also worked at 2 startups — Kevex, an HP spinoff acquired by British-American Tobacco, and Bebop, acquired by Google.
Dave holds 6 patents from his engineering work, and continues to advise executives at a number of technology companies through Mach49. He also speaks frequently to media, academic, and business organizations. He received a BS in engineering physics
and an MS in mechanical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.
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