Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2013

Award Winners

Winners of the Awards were announced on 24 November 2013 in Berlin, Germany in conjunction with the Tech Growth Summit Gala Dinner.
 

Entrepreneur of the Year Award Winner 2013




I am delighted and honored to accept the 2013 Entrepreneur of the Year Award on behalf of Openet, said Joe Hogan, Openet founder and CTO. It's rewarding for our peers to recognize the creativity and hard work Openet have put into building real time decision systems for the world's largest communications service providers. Our products enable operators to fully realize the commercial potential of their networks as they diversify consumer offerings, enable the emerging Internet of Things, and explore new business models.

Since the introduction of mobile data services in 1998, Openet has helped service providers capitalize on opportunities and overcome challenges. With competitive pressure accelerating, today's service providers rely on Openet software to evolve business models around networking smartphones, M2M devices and third party services. Openet's portfolio combines policy and charging control with device and third party interaction to enable innovative charging models, to control operating cost and to personalize services. More than 80 of the world's largest service providers in 28 countries use Openet's high performance software. Openet has helped operators worldwide take advantage of growth opportunities by evolving legacy platforms to provide a flexible, real-time charging/OCS capability integrated with policy control. For more information, please visit www.openet.com.

Niall Norton, CEO joined Openet in March 2004. Mr. Norton has served as the CEO since September 2006 and has served on our Board since August 2006. Between 2004 and 2006, Mr. Norton served as our CFO. Prior to joining us, he served as CFO and Corporate Secretary of O2 Ireland, the Irish operations of O2 Group Telecommunications PLC, from 2001 to 2004. Mr. Norton holds a degree in Commerce from University College Dublin and is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland.

Joe Hogan is Openet's founder.He has served as CTO since the company was founded in 1999. Mr. Hogan is the principle architect of Openet's product portfolio and has over 25 years of software engineering experience. Mr. Hogan is responsible for technology innovation in the company with oversight over Openet's CTO architecture office; Openet's Intellectual Property office, which manages creation and processing of Openet's patents; and Openet Labs, a unique software research group from which new Openet products emerge. Mr Hogan serves on the Openet Board as executive director along with Openet CEO Niall Norton.
 

Innovation Award Winner 2013



JohnElvesjo, CTO and Vice President of Tobii Technology said, Itis a true honorto receive theInnovation Award. Innovation is close to my heart, andmaintaining an entrepreneurial perspective is a core component in how we run the company on a daily basis. Tobii has grown from a small start-up to become the established world leader ineye tracking.Today all400 Tobiians around the worldcontribute to the innovations and entrepreneurial spirit of our organization.

Tobii is the world leader in eye tracking and gaze interaction. Our technology makes it possible for computers to know exactly where users are looking. It is revolutionizing computer interaction and is also widely used in various research fields. Tobii?s mission is to bring eye tracking to our daily lives. Some of that future is already here; we provide market-leading eye tracking technology to industrial partners in areas such as consumer electronics, gaming, vehicle safety, and medical diagnostics. Our eye tracking technology has revolutionized research in many fields and has enabled communication for tens of thousands of people with special needs. The goal is to always be first choice in any market and we are thus continuously expanding our offering beyond eye tracking and gaze interaction. The idea of eye tracking came from a research project at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and Tobii was founded in 2001. Innovation is at the heart of our business and Tobii has a strong focus on R&D; we continuously invest heavily in sharpening our core technology and in developing new products. Tobii continues to realize its visions, showing continuous and rapid year-to-year revenue growth, and receiving numerous awards and recognition for its accomplishments. From our head office in Stockholm, Sweden, our reach is as broad as our vision. With offices in the US, Germany, Norway, Japan and China and a global network of resellers and partners, Tobii serves customers worldwide. For more information please visit www.tobii.com.

As co-founder and CEO of Tobii Technology, Henrik Eskilsson has guided the strategic vision and goal of the company since its inception in 2001, radically evolving the company from ambitious startup to global power player in the technology and research fields. Under Eskilsson?s management, Tobii has pioneered the field of eye-tracking through various applications of its groundbreaking technology and experienced rapid growth, and the company?s reach has expanded into broader markets. Along with growing Tobii?s ever-expanding portfolio of global clients, Eskilsson has helped solidify Tobii?s position as the world leader in eye-tracking and eye-control technology. Prior to founding Tobii, Eskilsson founded Trampolinspecialisten AB, a Swedish sporting goods trading company. Earlier in his career, he was a project manager with Hotsip AB, a leading provider of communications infrastructure software.Eskilsson earned a Master of Science in international industrial engineering and management at the University of Linkoping in Sweden.

As co-founder and chief technology officer of Tobii Technology, John Elvesjo serves as the primary research and development director of the company. Elvesjo is an accomplished scientist and entrepreneur whose significant work in eye-tracking technology has been the bedrock of Tobii. His contributions, well documented in many research publications, have influenced the world of science in ways that are still yet to be known. He helps develop and push Tobii's proprietary technology to new heights in its application in scientific research, consumer electronics integration and usability testing. Elvesjo holds 15 patents, 13 related to Tobii's hardware and software innovations, including sensor technology, illumination methods and eye-control interaction techniques that contribute to Tobii's global superiority in eye-tracking technology advancements and reliability. Prior to beginning his role at Tobii, Elvesjo served as a researcher at the YKI Institute for Surface Chemistry at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and also founded Jensen Technology, a company he spun off from his research compiled at YKI. In 2008, he was named the IT Innovator of the Year, and in 2005 he received the Entrepreneur of the Year Award.Elvesjo studied engineering physics at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.

A co-founder of Tobii Technology, Marten Skogo serves as the chief science officer and has a significant influence on the research and development of Tobii eye-tracking and eye-control software. Prior to beginning his role at Tobii, Skogo was the co-founder and chief technology officer of Jenser Technology, a leader in industrial cleaning solutions. His contributions to the technological advancements of Jenser were integral to the development of the technology still used today. Earlier in his career, Skogo worked as a laboratory engineer for the YKI Institute for Surface Chemistry. His research focused on microemulsion fuels with renewable additives. Skogo earned a Master of Science in engineering physics from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.