After 30 years criss-crossing the globe, project-managing for corporations, nurturing his own company and pulling together a billion-dollar consortium, former Englishman Richard Egelstaff has moved into academic life to consider the concept of 'unlearning'.

And he's doing so in the relatively quiet location of Rockhampton, where he's now based at CQUniversity.

Richard Egelstaff. LINK for larger image

As a PhD candidate, Richard is interested in company assets, including the intangible benefits of 'change agents', who can help the organisation 'unlearn' and then reconstruct how it approaches its systems, rather than just benchmarking or replicating previous models of success.

"If management understands and embraces learning and unlearning, and then encourages honest and reflective appreciation of the need to reframe or forget prior recipes of success, organisations will be able to realise more effective change outcomes and innovation," he said.

Richard may be in the mood to reflect but he's still got plenty on his plate as a Senior Lecturer in Railway Systems for CQUniversity's Centre of Railway Engineering and as the Manager of Learning and Development for Rail Innovations Australia, also based in Rockhampton.

He's also still active as a founding partner in international software house WF Associates which he formed in 1984 and which led him to implement worldwide systems for companies such as CITIBANK. WF Associates developed one of the earliest computer-aided software engineering applications which was, at the time, the biggest-selling CASE application in the Asia Pacific.

Richard has worked across the UK, Asia and Australia in IT and telecommunications software development, organisational systems consulting and sales and market development.

He's also been responsible for business start-up and growth for several large US-based technology companies, such as Sybase and Lucent Technologies - Bell Labs Innovations.

It was while working with Lucent that he helped pull together the consortium including Leighton Contractors and Macquarie Bank to progress the billion-dollar Nextgen project, which has developed a national optic fibre network of approximately 8400km in length, extending from Brisbane to Perth via Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and Adelaide.

Nextgen could be one of the backbones of the huge NBN project which has been envisaged as Australia's largest-ever infrastructure program.

In his last industry role, Richard was working with responsibilities for enterprise IT systems for Thiess, a large construction, utility services and mining contract organisation based in Brisbane.

Richard Egelstaff. LINK for larger image

- Richard has presented his research during the Institute for Resource Industries and Sustainability (IRIS) Annual Postgraduate Student Conference on Wednesday December 1 at CQUniversity in Rockhampton.