Bio
Menno van Doorn is an engaging storyteller and an active speaker since he was out of his diapers. Menno is Director of the Research Institute for the Analysis of New Technology (VINT) in the Netherlands. He mixes personal life experiences with the findings of the 15 years of research done at the VINT Research Institute. Menno has co-authored three books on the impact of new technology on business and society.
Menno received the Computable Award for the research done in the field of open innovation and business transformation in October 2007. He is member of the Advisory Board of the Telecom & Management School of Business in Paris and member of the Coordinating Commission of the Social Media Research Centre Somere of the University of Twente (Netherlands). Menno is the host of a 1300+ business innovation community called “Social Strategy Talk” with events that are held in Amsterdam.
Menno was born in Gouda (say cheese) and went to Erasmus University to specialize himself in the field of economic psychology. This formed the base of his human-centric view on new technology.
Menno started his career at a government agency where he became responsible for spotting trends and translating them into new business opportunities for SME’s. From the early nineties Menno was presenting on trends like EDI and Japanese Style of quality impovement. He wrote several books on how to adopt these latest trends.
As the business relevance of the Internet grew, he explored the early Internet and got excited about the transformation potential. That was the moment he decided to move to the centre of the revolution, the IT Industry itself. He joined the IT company Sogeti, a world class organization, with 18.000 employees in Europe, USA and India.
On this day he works as the head of Sogeti’s Research Institute VINT in the Netherlands. But prior to this function, Menno was employed as a business consultant at Sogeti, working for multinationals and government agencies, responsible for getting the best business value out of the range of technological possibilities.
In 1999 Menno was asked by Sogeti’s executive board to define an E-learning strategy for the Academy Institute of Sogeti. He created a strategic alliance with Ohio University of distance learning and got involved in the EDINEB organization that focuses on innovation in learning. He introduced a new project based E-learning methodology within Sogeti. Over 50 groups and more than 1500 Sogeti employees have crossed the ocean and were trained in a three weeks course in Athens Ohio over the last ten years (2000-2009). In 2001 Menno became the director of the Sogeti Academy Institute.
In 2003 Menno went back to his roots as trendwatcher, public speaker and author as he became responsible for Sogeti’s Research Institute VINT: Vision Inspiration Navigation Trends. This Institute was founded in 1994. For VINT, prediction lies in getting beneath the statistics, exploring trends and patterns – human, social and technological – and applying common sense.
Together with CreativeCrowds VINT took the initiative in 2008 to found a community, where business innovators of the larger organizations and social media experts meet, socialize, and talk strategy. Menno is hosting this event that explores the new business and organization rules in sectors like finance, government, telecom and media and utilities.
Menno co-authored three books on the impact of new technology on organizations.
describes how a completely new interaction between individuals and institutions is transforming the world of business and politics. From Twitter and Facebook, to Mirror Worlds and Augmented Reality : new media are creating a new virtu-real world. In this world we all become media ourselves: me the media. This media revolution is changing the rules of how businesses are governed, how innovation takes place, how value is created.
gives a deep insight in the opportunities of crowdsourcing and new sorts of value creation where innovation increasingly comes from outside the company. Inspired by the model of open-source-development, we nowadays see crowdsourced shoes, medicine, wine, beer, advertising campaigns, laws, airplanes, toys, consumer goods, and all kinds of other stuff. This phenomenon of outsourcing to the crowd is part of the fundamental change of society as a whole.
is a book on the effects of the dotcom crisis: from irrational exuberance to the rigid Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The Sarbox-act of 2002 raised the question how companies can gain control over their information and related technology. Top-down, by legislation, or bottom-up, based on the emerging new guidelines for the enterprise 2.0.