Michael Killen heads Killen & Associates, an independent management-consulting boutique that assists corporations worldwide to develop new goals and strategies, including those that realign the organization with new goals to increase its success. Killen is respected worldwide for his knowledge of strategy, banking, telecommunications and enterprise computing. 

Killen recounts that Dr. An Wang, founder of Wang Laboratories, pushed Killen as a young man to develop uncommon insights. That motivated him to develop a hypothesis of strategy -- to see restraints and opportunities, anew. He also obtained an important clue from Napoleon’s thinking when he read: “When I view a situation with a body of principles I obtain a special view.” That statement prompted a breakthrough in Killen’s thinking about strategy.

Killen states: “We (management consulting firms) all have our frameworks for assisting clients to reorganize, design innovation, increase the value of the brand, and become more agile or customer centric. However, Killen & Associates has that special ability to recognize the importance of grand developments, such as The DataTreasury lawsuit, which threatens more banks than any other lawsuit; service oriented architecture (SOA), which is now the most important new development in enterprise computing; the enterprise resource planning (ERP) companies that are now the greatest economic force in enterprise computing; the combination of computing and music, which touches emotions like no other combinations of disparate elements; Al Gore’s film, “Uncomfortable Truth”, which will change how the world views the development of global warming.”

Killen & Associates published the first study or white paper on public key encryption, eProcurement, electronic bill presentment and payments (EBPP), electronic invoice presentment and payments (EIPP), the financial supply chain (FSC), electronic statement presentment (ESP), and multi-channel e-business (MCEB). The firm has published more than 300 studies.

Killen also produces "The Killen Report," a weekly television program cablecast in Silicon Valley. He has conducted almost 500 executive interviews. His guests have included a Noble Prize Winner, the Chairman of the FCC, the Minister of PTT Germany and Stanford University professors, artists and musicians. A brief list of executives from the banking and bank service industries who have appeared on Killen’s interview program are:

• Leonard Schrank, CEO, SWIFT (Belgium)
• Tim Jones, CEO, MONDEX (UK)
• Neil Hockaday, Senior VP, Hong Kong Shanghai Bank
• Michel Lucas, Chairman and CEO, Banques Federation du Credit Mutuel (France)
• Ron Williams, CEO, Europay 

Killen continues to produce WebCast interviews for worldwide distribution. In August 2006, Killen & Associates will release an interview with Tony Willis, Computer Architect, Sun Microsystems. Tony and Michael will discuss how the emerging SOA computing environment will enable corporations to cut costs and move faster.

In June 2006, Michael returned to South Africa to help a major organization rethink its goals now that it is no longer a legal monopoly. In 2005, he headed the team that produced a major study on Oracle’s acquisition strategy. In 2004, he helped a large corporation to plan its acquisition strategy. In 2003, he helped Chinese bankers recognize the need to develop a nationwide infrastructure to facilitate business-to-business payments. In 1997, Michael produced a conference that assisted the moderate Gulf Coast Countries to plan for the day when oil reserves would be depleted. In 1980, the People's Republic of China invited Killen to tour major universities to report on the status of computer science in that country.

Killen is the author of four books that provide an extensive view of the development of computing from 1987 to 1992. They include "IBM: The Making of the CommonView," (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988) about IBM’s Systems Application Architecture. Since the late 80’s, he has been a principal member of the editorial board of the United Kingdom's MiddlewareSpectra, a leading technical journal on middleware.

Killen established Wang Laboratory's Applications Programming Department, served as an advisor to Dr. Wang and as Director of Market Research at Rockwell International. He has also written columns for Business Communication Review (BCR), a major Japanese Daily and other publications.