Ed Esber

Ed Esber has over forty years experience in the computer industry working for IBM, Texas Instruments and as CEO of Ashton Tate and COO of Creative Labs. He was either a founder, executive or board member of several startups including VisiCorp, Creative Insights, SoloPoint, Motion Computing, Blue Roads Software, Poqet Computer and Pocket.com.

As a PC industry pioneer, he pioneered the marketing and distribution of retail, packaged software and developed the marketing strategies for two of the world’s best selling PC software packages of the 1980’s. He marketed the first spreadsheet, the first office suite and the first Wintel graphical user interface. After pioneering work in personal computer software, he did seminal work on the integration of computers and multimedia at Creative Labs, the integration of computers, toys and learning at Creative Insights, the integration of computers, communication and telephony at SoloPoint, the mobilization of email and internet access at Pocket.com and personal computer mobility first at Poqet Computer and then at Motion Computing, a tablet-PC company.

He has served on the board of directors of over forty public, private and non-profit boards. He currently serves on the board of directors of Utah Capital Investment Corporation (UCIC), Case Western Reserve University and Panterra Networks.

His education includes a B.S. Computer Engineering from Case Western Reserve University, a M.S. Electrical Engineering from Syracuse University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

In 2004, Ed was interviewed by the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley about his career. Click here for a transcript of the complete interview.