Mr. Gideon I. Gartner

An entrepreneur and CEO, Gartner founded and built three information technology and investment research companies, and is best known as leader of Gartner Inc. which at over $1B billion revenues, is the world’s leading IT Advisory firm (advisories differ from consultancies in their “continuous” contracts, providing for a basket of content and personal interaction “deliverables”, stressing decision-support). His other companies were Soundview Technology (sold to Schwab) and GIGA Information Group (sold to Forrester Research). The premise for each of his firms was a radical departure from then-current practice. Gartner holds B.S. and M.S. degrees from M.I.T. and M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management, respectively. After schooling, Gartner worked for System Development Corp. (SDC), IBM Corp., and Oppenheimer&Co., where he was voted in the principal poll of financial institutions (Institutional Investor Magazine) as the leading individual computer industry analyst, for 6 consecutive years. He presently lives in Aspen and New York and is involved with several businesses and philanthropies.