Dr Philip O'Donovan

Biography

Phil O'Donovan is a British engineer and entrepreneur who obtained a PhD in "Character Recognition Using Optical Fibres and Hardwired Logic" under Emeritus Professor Larry F Lind at the University of Essex in 1978. He was a co-founder of Cambridge Silicon Radio Ltd which, as London Stock Exchange FTSE 250 company CSR plc, became the Bluetooth chip market leader. O’Donovan, as co-founding Managing Director, helped grow Cambridge-based CSR from a start-up of nine into a highly successful FTSE 250 listed fabless semiconductor company employing, in 2015, more than 2,000 people in 23 locations. Within four years from 1999, CSR became the Bluetooth market leader and supplier of chips to hundreds of global high-volume consumer product manufacturers. By 2012, CSR had achieved annual revenue of $1billion and, by 2015, had shipped close to 4billion chips. CSR was acquired by US company Qualcomm in 2016 for $2.5billion. Phil is an Engineer and a Cambridge-based mentor, coach and investor in technology start-ups where he usually takes a non-executive director or chairman role. He is a lecturer on entrepreneurial topics at universities8 and business schools, an advisor to university Technology Transfer Offices and to organisations wishing to commercialise their IP. As a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, Phil O’Donovan devotes a proportion of his time to helping the next generation of engineers and scientists become successful entrepreneurs.