Donal O’Connell graduated from the National Institute of Higher Education, Limerick, Ireland in 1985, with a Degree in Electronic Engineering. A former Director of Intellectual Property Rights at Nokia, Donal was with Nokia for a period of 21 years and has had a long and varied experience in the global wireless telecommunications industry, having worked for periods in UK, USA, Finland, and Hong Kong.
In the US Donal led and managed the Nokia R&D centre in Texas from 1997 to 2003, growing the site from scratch by recruiting and developing more than 600 engineers during that time period and designing, developing and launching numerous successful products to the market-place. In parallel to his R&D responsibilities in Texas, Donal was Environmental Manager for Nokia in the Americas from 2001 to 2003. Donal was a member of Nokia’s American Management Board while based in Texas.
More recently Donal was a leader and manager of Nokia’s IPR Patent Creation team from 2003 to 2006. During this time period he successfully managed a number of major change projects within Nokia IPR.
Donal has written a book on patent creation called “Inside the Patent Factory”, which was published in April 2008 by Wiley & Sons. He has a second book on the subject of external innovation and the role of IP titled “Not All the Smart People Work for You”, which is due to be published in 2010. Donal is the owner and Managing Director of Chawton Innovation Services Ltd.