Dr. Richard (Rick) Thomas Watson

The J. Rex Fuqua Distinguished Chair for Internet Strategy in the Department of MIS at the University of Georgia's Terry College of Business. He is also the Research Director for the Advanced Practices Council of the Society for Information Management. Born in South Australia, he spent much of his childhood on a farm near Narembeen in Western Australia. He was educated at the University of Western Australia, receiving his B.Sc. (1966-1968) and his Diploma in Computation in 1969. He received his M.B.A. from Monash University (1971-1973), and his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota (1984-1987) where he studied on a Fulbright award. He returned to Australia, and taught at Curtin University and Edith Cowan University, where he founded the Department of Information Systems. He is a Visiting Researcher at the Viktoria Institute in Sweden, and the International Coordinator for the Addis Ababa University Ph.D. in IS. He moved from Perth, Western Australia to Athens, GA, U.S.A. in 1989 where he says, he is one of the few people in Athens with a ?genuine southern accent?. In 2006, he was appointed a Fellow of the Association for Information Systems and in 2007 a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. In 2011, he received the Association for Information Systems' LEO award, which is given for exceptional lifetime achievement in Information Systems. He has published over 150 articles in leading academic and practitioner journals; written or edited more than 10 books (including a data Management text book and the first book on Energy Informatics). His work has been accepted by leading academic and practitioner journals and has been translated into several languages. He has served as a Senior Editor for MIS Quarterly and was Co-conference Chair for International Conference on Information Systems in 2004. He has also been President of the Association for Information Systems. He co-leads the Global Text Project, which provides free electronic textbooks for students in the developing world. Its aim is to create a library of 1,000 open content textbooks for these students. His most recent research focuses on Information Systems (IS) leadership, the business of open source, net-based customer service systems, and the role of IS in creating sustainable business practices as well as ecological sustainability. He is also doing research in energy informatics; which is founded on the recognition that flow networks, in their various forms, are the major suppliers and consumers of energy. He also collaborates with researchers in several countries and has given invited presentations in more than twenty countries. He lives in Athens, Georgia with his wife, Clare, and children, Alice, Ned, and Sophie.