With the recent corporate bailouts and the series of scandals that shook the business community not long ago still fresh in people’s minds, it is comforting to come across someone promoted to an executive position who is setting out to guarantee transparency and cooperation with the general public.The World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C, has named Dr. Jaffrey Jaffe its new Chief Executive Officer. According to www.w3c.org, Jaffe has left his Novell Inc. position as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to work jointly with W3C director Tim Berners-Lee, and the public as a whole, to promote the growth of the W3C’s vision. (Image courtesy of: www.w3c.org)
At 350 members strong, the W3C is an organization dedicated to the promotion and evolution of standards and guidelines for the Worldwide Web. The overarching goal of the W3C is to make the Internet an accessible resource to everyone. Recently, the W3C has focused specifically on expanding and improving mobile web access.
“Jeff [Jaffe] has outstanding leadership and business skills to help address a wealth of arising opportunities,” W3C director Tim Berners-Lee expressed. Previously, Jaffe held the positions of President at Bell Labs Research, President of Advanced Technologies at Lucent Technologies, and Vice president of Technology at IBM. The W3C trusts this impressive history has provided Jaffe the “global leadership experience” needed to succeed in the Information Technology industry.
In his most recent position as CTO of Novell Inc., Jaffe aligned the company to win valuable partnerships with corporate giants Microsoft, IBM, and SAP. Jaffe learned to build lasting relationships based on the idea of “co-op-petition,” a term coined by former Novell CEO Ray Noorda, which involves partnering with traditional competitors to further the goals of both parties. The partnership Jaffe formed with Microsoft was particularly noteworthy, considering the two firms had trouble working together in the past due to significant differences in opinion. The diplomatic skills Jaffe used to assuage the old wounds between Novell and Microsoft will surely serve him well as the leader of the W3C.
On March 8th, Jaffe wrote his first blog as CEO in which he stated he was “excited to join the W3C at th
is time of increased innovation, since W3C is the place where the industry comes together to set standards for the Web in an open and collaborative fashion.” Jaffe also explained that his top priority “is to preserve and enhance the W3C culture of having an open consensus-based process.” (Image courtesy of: www.w3c.org)In an organization such as the W3C, which strives to embody the ideas of all internet users, Jaffe’s diplomatic leadership style appears to fit perfectly. It will be exciting to see if internet standards will be able to keep up with the pace at which technology is evolving. It won’t take long to find out if Jaffe is up to the challenge.
For more information visit: http://www.w3.org/2010/03/ceo-pr.html
[Sources: http://bit.ly/9o2jI8, http://bit.ly/bb6BUI, http://bit.ly/bE4qOu, http://bit.ly/cMXzDh]
