Donal O’Connell
Managing Director, Chawton Innovation Services
Donal is the Managing Director of Chawton Innovation Services. The company offers consultancy in the areas of innovation and intellectual property management. It helps clients to appreciate their intellectual capital, assets and property, and to ensure that they manage these intangibles efficiently and effectively.
Donal graduated from NIHE Limerick (now The University of Limerick) in Ireland in ’85, with a Degree in Electronic Engineering. Donal was formerly a VP of R&D and a Director of IP at Nokia. Donal had a long career at Nokia for 21 years and has wide and varied experience in the wireless telecoms industry, having worked for periods in The Netherlands, UK, USA, Finland, and HK.
Donal is an Adjunct Professor at Imperial College Business School in London, and teaches about ‘IP management’. Donal has also written a large number of papers on various aspects of innovation and IP which have been published in a number of magazines, websites and blogs around the world.
Since 2013, Donal has been included in the IAM 300 (the world’s leading IP Strategists) an annual listing of those individuals identified as offering operating companies and other IP owners world-class advice on maximising the value of their intellectual property.
Donal is also involved with a number of innovative and creative start-up companies, for example Industry Advisor at Brandstrike, an on-line brand protection services and technology company and Chairman at Deltasight, a big data company ‘joining the dots between business, technology, people and IP data.
Together with some associates, Donal also coaches and mentors a number of start-up companies on innovation and entrepreneurship.