LEO Award Winner - William R. King
			William R. King William R. King holds the title University Professor in the Katz Graduate School of Business of the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of more than 300 papers that have appeared in the leading journals in information sys¬tems, management science and strategic planning. He has authored, co¬authored or coedited 15 books that have been translated into numerous languages. One his coauthored books—Systems Analysis and Project Management—won the McKinsey Foundation Award as a “significant contribution to management” and another was named “Book of the Year” by the Institute of Industrial Engineers. Bill was the Founding President and first Executive Director of AIS; he also served as President of the Institute of Management Sciences (TIMS)—a predecessor to INFORMS, as Editor-in-Chief of the MIS Quarterly and was instrumental in conceiving of, obtaining funding for, and selecting the first editor of Information Systems Research. He was a cofounder and has twice served as Chair or Cochair of ICIS (1987 and 2005); he was also Chair of the first AMCIS in 1995. He received his Ph.D. from Case Institute of Technology (now part of Case Western Reserve University) under the tutelage of Russell L. Ackoff, and holds a M.S. in Opera¬tions Research from Case and a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from the Pennsylvania State University. Among the honors that Bill has received are being named, along with John Nash of “A Beautiful Mind” fame and several other Nobel laureates, one of about 100 people who have had the greatest impact on management science in the past 50 years (Inaugural Fellow Award). He is a Fellow of AIS, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Decision Sciences Institute. As President of TIMS, Bill created and implemented the merger planning process with the Operations Research Society of America that resulted in the creation of INFORMS. In his first chairmanship of ICIS, he put the organization on a sound financial basis for the first time. At the University of Pittsburgh, he has been the principal investigator on numerous grants including a multi-million dollar IBM MOIS grant. Under that grant, he conceived of, designed, and obtained approval for a then-unique double-degree program—MBA and MS in IS. He also redesigned and reinvigorated the Katz School’s Ph.D. program and, in cooperation with other schools of the university, created a Telecommunications graduate program. Bill created the concept and a workable methodology for strategic planning for IS in the early 1970s; when IBM picked up his ideas and incorporated them into its Business Systems Planning (BSP) methodology, they were applied in firms across the globe. Currently, his research is primarily in knowledge management and IT outsourcing as well as the areas of strategic IS planning and IS evaluation in which he was a pioneer. He first became interested in computers as an undergraduate, programming in the “naughts and crosses” (machine language) and was one of those people at several universities who, in the 1960s, created the academic field that has come to be called Information Systems. Bill has been married to Fay for 46 years and has three children and five grandchildren. In 2004, he returned to work after recovering from three major surgeries, two of which were liver transplants. He has expressed deep gratitude for the Leo but is somewhat concerned that a “lifetime achievement” award will be taken as the capstone of his career. He expresses the hope and belief that he will continue to contribute to IS for many years.