Stefan Doeblin

Stefan Doeblin - Chairman, Network Economy

Stefan sits on the investment boards of a number of hi-tech companies. He was previously a member of the advisory board of central R&D of Deutsche Telekom. Prior to that Stefan was CEO and one of the two major shareholders of the TIMe-start-up management group, and was MD of MFS Communications in Germany (now part of MCI WorldCom) setting up the first local loop access carrier in competition to Deutsche Telekom (getting special permission from the Regulator to install fibre in several cities, one year before deregulation allowed it, and negotiating the first contract with city authorities in Germany to use their ducts for cabling!)

Before his work at MFS, Stefan was Business Development Manager at British Telecom plc., in charge of acquisitions, strategic alliances and strategic projects (outsourcing, system integration and consulting). Even earlier he worked as senior consultant for Arthur D. Little in client projects at Swisscom, BT and Siemens.

Stefan graduated in Mathematics and Business Administration and Engineering and started his career as a systems engineer at SEL Software GmbH, now part of Alcatel. Stefan has worked around the world and is author of the books “Wie beeinflußt der Kapitalmarkt die Innovation in der Telekommunikation”, published in 2001, “eCompanies, gründen, wachsen, ernten”, published 2000 and "Just in Time bei Software Grossprojekten", published in 1991.

Stefan is an entrepreneur who has contributed to the book “The future of telecommunications industries” By Arnold Picot. This is all the evidence we needed that he is an ideal speaker for the South African community as he has the understanding of an academic but the experience of a venture capitalist. He has agreed to speak at our conference planned May 24, 2010.