Title
Director, Open Innovation Office in HP Laboratories
Company

Bio
Michel Benard is Director of the Open Innovation Office in HP Laboratories. His team is responsible for developing HP labs research partnerships with universities, governments and companies worldwide.

Michel graduated and received his PhD in Digital Image Processing from the Telecom Paris in 1983 and held R&D positions at IBM and was Assistant Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. In 1987 he joined the sales force of Apollo Computer in Switzerland and became Sales Manager for western Switzerland in 1988.

Michel joined HP from Apollo Computer in 1989. He was HP Major Account Manager for High-Energy-Physics in Europe from 1990 to 1996, taking care of 70 European customers with a sales team. Then he joined HP EMEA Alliance and Corporate Development in 1997 where he managed technology partnerships with key commercial and public sector customers and worked on strategic programs in Computer Systems, Networking and Digital Photography.

In 2000 Michel graduated from the Swiss Banking Institute in Geneva and in 2001 joined AXA Technology, Inc., a start-up in Imaging Software, as GM for Europe.

Back to HP in 2002, Michel joined joined HP University Relations. He developed global partnership programs in Grid Computing, in Data Management and in Digital Publishing. Michel also launched and developed strategic investments of HP University Relations in Russia, China, India and Singapore. Large joint partnerships between HP and Unesco were also launched.

In 2005 Michel became Director of Technology Programs for HP University Relations (which became Open Innovation Office in 2008) and since then has been managing a global team responsible for bringing external R&D, external funding and top talent to HP Laboratories.