David L. Tennenhouse,

Partner, New Venture Partners


David Tennenhouse is a general partner at New Venture Partners, the recognized leader in the field of corporate spin-outs. New Ventures Partners is on the cutting edge of open innovation, discovering new business opportunities that originate within today’s corporate R&D labs and bringing them to market as new ventures. David came to New Venture Partners from Amazon.com, where he was Vice-president of Platform Strategy and CEO of its A9.com subsidiary

Prior to Amazon/A9, Dr. Tennenhouse was Vice President and Director of Research at Intel Corporation, where he pioneered an “open collaborative” approach to corporate research. This was, in part, based on David’s earlier role as DARPA’s Chief Scientist and Director of its Information Technology Office. At both DARPA and Intel, he was involved in the strategic planning and execution of programs related to a wide range of technologies, including: networking, wireless communications, computer architecture, distributed computing, machine learning, search / data mining, image processing, robotics, MEMs, healthcare and nano/bio-technology.

Tennenhouse is widely known for his Proactive Computing initiative to create future computing environments that will anticipate the needs of their users and take actions on their behalf. This provides the over-arching framework for the research on sensor networks, ubiquitous computing, planetary-scale systems, machine learning, etc. that he has championed. David has also been one of the pioneers of Asynchronous Transfer Mode networking, Active networks, Software Radio, and Software-based video processing.

Dr. Tennenhouse earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Toronto and completed his Ph.D. at the Computer Laboratory of the University of Cambridge. He held academic appointments at MIT in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and in the Sloan School of Management. In addition to research and teaching, David was actively involved in the development of commercial technologies and business strategies, both as a consultant and as founder of a firm with expertise in fault tolerant transaction processing.

David is a member of the ACM and a Fellow of the IEEE. He is currently a Director of the Computing Research Association (CRA) and a member of the Advisory Committee of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Computer and Information Sciences and Engineering (CISE) Directorate. He is also a member of the Dean’s Advisory Board of Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science and on the Industrial Advisory Board of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at UC Berkeley.

Dr. Tennenhouse has previously served on the NIST Visiting Committee and on various
Defense Science Board task forces. He was also a member of the National Science and Technology Council's subcommittee on Computing Information and Communications R&D and chaired the Technology & Policy Working Group of the President's Information Infrastructure Task Force.

Reprinted with kind permission from David L. Tennenhouse .