Michael W. Wright

Michael W. Wright is the co-founder of Intercepting Horizons, (https://interceptinghorizons.com), a strategic advisory consulting and research company dedicated to helping companies identify and strategically intercept rapidly developing trends and utilizing the SPX process, continuously evolve sustainable strategies to stay ahead of the curve in an exponential era.

He has spent most of his career as a senior executive and strategist in high technology which has allowed him to pervade a broad range of industries and experience most cultures of the developed world. That experience includes both line and staff and includes all management levels, from product to functional, to c-suite to public boards. He is fortunate to be one of few senior executives who have expertise in both operations and strategy, as well as in governance and organizational architecture on a global scale.

He has raised millions for startups and publicly traded entities and been entrusted with the assets of nascent to large-cap global technology companies and been a successful entrepreneur. He has also lived management responsibilities from venture capital to public ownership and championed product and process development along with growing intangible assets. Michael developed and promoted strategic leadership training, innovation, and high-speed transitions on the path to building high-performance teams. And luckily, he had the foresight to build robust, future-oriented, capacity in information technology and knowledge management, the basis for global competition during the 4th industrial revolution and now the exponential era.

As a CEO, a C-suite global executive at scale, and board member he has led successful startups to exits, including his own (WWK.com) and others notably August Technologies (AUGT/RTEC) and Entegris (ENTG). In addition, he has also been involved in over 35 mergers and acquisitions, many at scale. His business and management range is unique in high-technology with innovations in air and mass flow instrumentation, clean rooms, lithography, materials, testing, and software products and platforms across multiple industries. Because of his unique range of advanced technologies experience, he also participated in the DARPA-Sematech competitive analysis group as one of only two industry equipment and materials representatives.

Michael is also a writer with two books, The New Business Normal and The Exponential Era, plus over 40 published articles focused on the interaction of business and technology with human behaviors, values, and complex interactive systems. He is also a speaker and for over a decade was participant and chairman of the SEMI Industry Strategy Symposium. He is a graduate of the navy nuclear power school and executive programs at RIT and Kellogg. He holds two patents in microfluidics and commercialized the cost of ownership, capacity planning, and simulation models for the semiconductor and solar industries. Michael also taught strategic leadership at the Carlson School of Management/UMN. He is a Sr. Fellow at the University of Minnesota/Technological Leadership Institute and Chairman Emeritus of the Advisory Board.