Richard (Rick) Irving, D.Tech., B.A.Sc., MASc., Ph.D., is uniquely qualified to write this book. He grew up in the fifties and sixties in rural New Brunswick, Canada; went to one-room country schools; and ultimately completed a Ph.D. at the University of Waterloo. Eventually, he had a thirty-five-year career as a tenured professor at the Schulich School of Business at York University in Toronto. On the way, he had three marriages, traveled the world, taught on four continents, lived in New York for two years, and spent a year in Provence before it was fashionable. Rick was in Lisbon in April 1974 during the Carnation Revolution; he was once detained by the police in southern France for hitchhiking; he hiked part of the Inca Trail; and was briefly barred from a Toys “R” Us.

Over a forty-year career, he specialized in studying how organizations adapt to technological changes. Rick has published fourteen academic articles, numerous reports, and two books—Office Information Systems: Management Issues and Methods, Wiley, 1991, and Don’t Leave IT to the Geeks, Pheasant Ridge, 2001.

Rick was president and CEO of Hazelburn Co-op, a non-profit housing co-op; president of Beatty Buddies, a non-profit daycare; and past president and ex-member of the board of HIMSS Ontario, a non-profit Association for IT Healthcare Professionals. He was a contributing editor for Canadian Healthcare Technology, writing a regular column on Healthcare and IT, from 2000 to 2014, when he retired from that position.

Currently, he is enjoying retirement and is active in his Port Credit community.