David Skyrme is a strategic analyst and management consultant with extensive knowledge and experience of information and knowledge management. He blends deep analytical insights with practical management experience. Combining the skills of thinker, analyst, synthesiser, communicator, project manager and innovator, during his career he has been responsible for introducing new thinking, new products and services, new methods, and new initiatives.
David's hybrid career embraces consulting, writing, research and education/training.
Since completing a first class honours degree and doctorate at Oxford University David Skyrme has held a number of marketing, analyst and management roles in a 25 year career in the computer industry, many of them senior roles in Digital Equipment Corporation. While there, he created and managed Digital's UK Market Intelligence group, setting up processes for analysing computer industry trends, and creating a knowledge centre. As UK Strategic Planning Manager, he developed strategic planning processes for creating the vision and plans for the UK board of management. He was co-creator of People for the '90s, a strategic initiative that culminated in DEC's recognised leadership in virtual working practices.
He left Digital in March 1993 and set up his own management systems consultancy — David Skyrme Associates Limited. In association with it's network partners, it provides products and services that give senior executives and policy makers insights into creating successful knowledge-based strategies.
David publishes and presents regularly on a wide range of strategic information issues, including knowledge management, strategic impact of IT, innovation, networked and learning organizations, hybrid managers, market and global intelligence systems, information resources management (IRM), Internet business strategies, virtual organizations and teleworking.
He is best known today as a leading authority on knowledge management, including being featured as a 'guru' by Information Age. In 1997, he coauthored Creating the Knowledge-based Business described by practitioners as required reading" and "the bible of knowledge management". This was followed in 1998 by Measuring the Value of Knowledge, described by Bipin Junnarkar, when Director of Knowledge Management at Monsanto as "an outstanding contribution to the field of intellectual capital measurements". He has written two books: Knowledge Networking: Creating the Collaborative Enterprise and Capitalizing on Knowledge: From e-business to k-business, both published by Butterworth-Heinemann (1999 and 2001).
David also has several academic connections. His work has included running MBA and short-course workshops, course development, external examiner and assessor, supervising MBA projects, tutoring and mentoring (The Open University, Reading University, Henley Management College and others). He is a senior research fellow of the Institute of Innovation, Creativity and Capital at the University of Austin, Texas. From 1995-99 he was a member of the ESRC Research Grants Board, representing users of social and business research.
He lives with his wife in the village of Highclere in North Hampshire, England (approximately 55 miles or 85km west of London), where he teleworks from his home office. His interests include swimming, badminton, photography, and rambling, especially in the Wessex Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. He has three grown-up daughters, pursuing careers in landscape architecture, banking, and marine conservation.