Tom is a Design Director at IDEO in London, where he uses the innovation and design process to develop new business opportunities. A serial entrepreneur and angel investor, Tom has first-hand experience in building successful enterprises and, as a result, a very thorough understanding of business. He is particularly interested in commercializing new products and services, and his clients include technology, retail, FMCG, financial services, hospitality and fashion brands, Having spent a year teaching secondary school in Tanzania, he also believes in the power of entrepreneurship for sustainable social good. He recently founded OpenIDEO, an open innovation platform.

Tom earned a bachelor's degree in physics, with class honors, from the University of Bristol and an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he received the Baker Scholar Award of high distinction. In 1998, after finishing his university degree, he joined British sports car manufacturer Marcos Sales Ltd., where he became Managing Director and transformed the loss-making company into a profitable enterprise by diversifying the company into race cars and road cars. He sold the company in 1999. In 2000, he founded Fluid Conditioning Systems Ltd. to commercialise the Magnom™, a patented magnetic filtration innovation system, now used in a diverse range of industries, including Formula 1. Current customers include Ferrari F1, Ducati, JCB and Fernox. He oversaw expansion of the company operations to the United States.

Tom regularly speaks on the topics of entrepreneurship, design thinking, open innovation and industry disruption. In December of 2009 he published an essay in The Future of Innovation, titled "The Future of Innovation is Holistic and Networked," and regularly posts to his blog www.weijiblog.com.

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)