By Grace Chua

AS A teenager in the 80s, Viktor Mayer-Schonberger was a star computer programmer in Austria, winning competitions and even starting his own software company.

At 23, he landed an internship at Steve Jobs' start-up NeXT Computers in the United States.

But he was so intimidated, he said, by the 'tough and smart' instructors there - some even younger than he was - that he decided he was too old to be a programmer. He switched to law.

Armed with a law degree from the University of Salzburg, he went on to obtain a masters in law from Harvard University in the US and a doctorate from the University of Salzburg, studying information and technology law.

From 1999, he was assistant and then associate professor of public policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

At Harvard, he studied information flows, the Internet and law, writing on topics like the US stance on international Internet governance.

Today, the 42-year-old is an associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKYSPP), and director of its new Information and Innovation Policy Research Centre.

Among the new projects the centre will undertake are a regional index of information's role in promoting creativity, as well as examining the role of information and reputation on e-commerce and social networking.

Singapore provides a good base to research the way information flows in Asia facilitate innovation, he feels.

'Heterogeneity is a wonderful driver of these positive, innovative information flows, and one potential strength of Asia is its heterogeneity of cultures and people,' which makes it a ripe target for study, Dr Mayer-Schonberger said.

Commenting on his appointment, the dean of LKYSPP, Professor Kishore Mahbubani, said: 'Every year, Viktor organises a conference where he brings together the chief technology officers of some of the world's major corporations, for example, Microsoft, Google, Skype.

'They meet in Rueschlikon in Switzerland - it's the Davos of IT. Now, he's going to bring the conference to our school.'

This article was first published in The Straits Times on Sept 24, 2008.

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