Dr Anthon Botha

Anthon Botha holds a PhD in Physics and is Managing Director of TechnoScene (Pty) Ltd and Executive Director of InnovationLab (Pty) Ltd, a black economic empowered company. TechnoScene operates in the knowledge industry to provide business consulting in the management and commercialisation of knowledge, technology and innovation and facilitates debates and events in the field of science and technology.

Anthon studied at the University of Stellenbosch and did his post-graduate work at the Van de Graaff Group at the current iThemba LABS in the Western Cape. He worked for the CSIR in electronic materials research and development from 1982 to 1989. In 1989 he founded TechnoScene. His academic exposure includes being invited as part-time Extraordinary Professor in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Pretoria. From 1994 to 2004 he has been a guest lecturer in Management of Technology and Innovation to post-graduate students in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Pretoria.

His work is based on the Management of Technology, Innovation and Knowledge as disciplines, and incorporates futures research, strategic research and businesses consulting on the impact of emerging, often digital, technologies on the way we live, work, play and transact.

These capabilities are key to IBs success of taking viable business proposals and ‘new wave’ consumer technology to market.

Dr Andrew Boake

Andrew has been involved in information technology from 1985, in areas as diverse as systems programming, image processing, geographical information systems, compilers, knowledge-based systems, and financial systems. Having come up the ranks from developer, designer, team leader, system architect, to IT steering committee member for a large insurance company, and now consulting to large corporates, his passion is the design of large systems and understanding the essential aspects of technical solutions, in order to recommend appropriate strategic direction.

While developing software for various companies around Gauteng, he obtained an MSc in Computer Science in 1993 (thesis titled “Reverse Compilation”), and a PhD in Computer Science in 1998 (thesis titled “A Knowledge-Based Software Design Supervisor”). He has published a number of academic papers, and has presented at various conferences, in the area of software engineering.

Andrew is engaged in research into the broader areas of software engineering, and consults to large corporates, primarily concerning their software architecture. He is also involved in software engineering research at the University of Pretoria, lectures and supervises postgraduate students in the areas of Software Engineering and Software Architecture, referees academic research articles, and is an evaluator of Innovation Fund projects for the National Research Foundation.