EurOMA 2011 - Speakers

David Upton

David Upton was elected to the prestigious American Standard Chair of Operations Management at Oxford University in June 2009, where he also serves on the Governing Body of Christ Church College.   For twenty years previous, he was a tenured faculty member at the Harvard where he was the Albert J. Weatherhead III Professor of Business Administration.

His research centers on Operations Improvement and Innovation, Strategy, and Information Technology.  He is the author of numerous books and articles, most recently Pursuing the Operations Edge (Wiley, 2004) and the much-acclaimed Radically Simple IT, (HBR, 2008) describing a revolutionary way of improving operations and information systems in living, breathing organizations.   His research spans the globe – from India to China, from the US to South America.  Most recently, his work focuses on the rapid improvement of service and knowledge-based organizations.  David is also a professional engineer, starting his career working on the shop-floor of manufacturing plants.  He spent his early research years working on artificial intelligence and the Internet during its initial development.

David is a compelling presenter, winning Harvard’s Apgar award for Innovation in Teaching.  He is consistently rated the best instructor in the wide range of operations and IT courses and presentations he runs.   At Harvard, he led the first-year MBA courses in Technology and Operations Management and served as faculty chair of Harvard's executive course on Operations Strategy and Improvement for fifteen years.  He also taught the Advanced Management Program for senior managers as well as the China-based courses on IT and Operations with Tsinghua University in Beijing. More recently, he led Harvard’s course for CEOs in the Young Presidents Organization. 

David has been a director of Tech Data  - a Tampa-based Fortune 100 IT distributor and service provider since 1997.   He was the subject of the one-hour TV special “Profiles on Leaders in Information Technology” for his work on new approaches to the rapid innovation of operations and IT.    He lives in Oxford, UK and Boston, MA.

Michael "Kell" Ryan

The modus operandi on how Ryanair revolutionised air travel in Europe is a fascinating one. This industry had not changed in 75 years and he outlines the methods, tough decisions taken, implementing change so that the company became the first low cost carrier in Europe and now the largest. Dozens of airlines have tried to emulate Ryanair but none have achieved the same success.

Kell joined Ryanair in its embryonic stage, a company conceptualised and financed by Dr T.A.Ryan, Kell’s older brother, after 24 years working for the Irish national airline Aer lingus where he was responsible for all operations, passenger and other airline handling contracts at London Heathrow Airport.

Working unrelentingly to revolutionise and change air travel within Europe, Ryanairs business model has made air travel affordable to all and changed the way people fly and even the way society works. Kell headed the major and crucial transfer of establishing the airline to the then little known airport Stansted and before retiring spent the last few years primarily promoting and marketing Ryanair within Europe and North Africa.

It is of great pride to him that he is a pioneering member of a team that has changed travel within Europe to the extent that in 1985 Ryanair carried 5000 passengers and is the largest low cost airline in Europe and carried 72 million passengers in 2010. It is now the largest international airline in the world.

Kell has chaired and been involved with many tourism forums within Ireland, England, Wales the Channel Islands and mainland Europe. A strong advocate of higher education, and is currently involved with universities in Ireland, England, Germany and in the United States of America where he is also on the advisory board for the Daytona based Embry Riddle Aeronautical University.

Kell takes great delight in passing on his knowledge, enthusiasm and love of Aviation and Tourism and an insight into Ryanairs success on changing aviation in Europe, how it managed change, company culture, leadership, innovation, motivation and most importantly of all for any company the unrelenting control of costs and how it can be applied to any business.