Avron Barr and Shirley Tessler are co-directors of SCIP’s Software Industry Study, with Professor William Miller. Ms. Tessler has degrees from Wharton and Stanford in Finance and Computer Science. Much of her career has been in commercial banking and corporate finance. Mr. Barr studied Computer Science at Stanford, edited the four-volume Handbook of Artificial Intelligence, and co-founded a Silicon Valley software start-up in 1981. Barr and Tessler are also the principals of Aldo Ventures, Inc., a management consulting firm focused on software and its strategic use in business.

Since it started in 1994, the SCIP Software Industry Study has systematically identified and analyzed the issues that will shape the commercial use of software, including piracy, patents, antitrust, project management, the Internet, globalization, litigation, software quality and project failures. Since the fall of 1996, their study has focused on the ramifications of the worldwide shortage of talented software people. A new initiative will be presented at this year’s Forum, investigating the dramatic changes anticipated during the next decade in corporate software development and procurement practices.