•    Head, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group, Imperial College Business School
•    Director, Digital Economy Centre, Imperial College London
•    Group Innovation Executive, Laing O’Rourke plc
•    Chairman, Think Play Do Group ltd

David Gann holds the Chair in Innovation and Technology Management at the Business School and Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Imperial College London. He is a Chartered Civil Engineer with a PhD in Industrial Economics. He previously held the Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Innovative Manufacturing at Sussex University.

David Gann founded Imperial College’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group one of the world’s leading departments in its field, cited in the recent UK Research Assessment Exercise for its excellence in research. It hosts research programmes with funding of more than £30m, including: the EPSRC Innovation Studies Centre; EPSRC/ESRC/AIM Innovation and Productivity Grand Challenge; ESRC/AIM UK Innovation Research Centre (with Cambridge); the Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship; the QinetiQ Chair in Technology Transfer; and Design London (with the Royal College of Art) focussing on simulation and incubation of ideas in health, environment and energy systems and services. The Group collaborates closely with large and small firms in design, manufacturing, engineering, construction, IT and healthcare industries, including IBM, Microsoft, Finmeccanica, Atkins, Arup, GSK, BT, QinetiQ and BP.

David has deep experience in industry, starting new businesses and advising on government policy. He is responsible for innovation strategy at Laing O’Rourke plc, the UK’s largest privately owned construction and civil engineering group, which successfully completed the building of Heathrow’s £4.3bn Terminal 5 on time and on budget. Laing O’Rourke jointly manages the 2012 Olympic development programme and is building the $20bn Al Raha City in Abu Dhabi. David co-founded the Think Play Do Group, an Imperial College spin-out specialising in innovation strategy and management. He was innovation advisor to Computer Science Corporation, and advisor to the Deputy Prime Minister’s Construction Taskforce. He has been a member of eleven Department of Trade and Industry science and technology expert missions to Japan, the US and Europe. He is a trustee and member of the board of directors of the Thames Gateway Institute for Sustainability and is a member of the housing working group of the Construction Innovation and Growth Team reporting to Secretary of State for Business Innovation and Skills for the government’s Low Carbon Construction Review.

• He was appointed CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) for services to engineering in the Queen’s Birthday Honours, 2010.

• He is author of a large number of academic papers and with Mark Dodgson and Ammon Salter, has recently published:

• Think Play Do – technology, innovation and organization Oxford University Press, 2005

• The Management of Technological Innovation: Strategy and Practice Oxford University Press, 2008 

• Innovation: A Very Short Introduction Oxford University Press, 2010

For additional information relating to the AIM Executive Steering Committee, please contact Jacqueline Brown at – jacqueline.brown@cranfield.ac.uk

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