Jonathan Ruff
Jonathan Ruff is senior director of technology, product and experience marketing for the Motorola Applied Research Center, where he is responsible for positioning Motorola’s future technologies and innovations.
In this role, Ruff oversees the marketing of the Center, including website development and creation of materials. Ruff is also involved in efforts on internal deployment and delivery, helping pure IT-centric teams be implementers of infrastructure, demos and other technologies and making the Center team a socially networked enterprise.
On the customer side, Ruff regularly interfaces with customers at event trade shows and experience labs with the goal of helping customers understand the reality of the technologies from the Center such the next-generation of video and media experience delivery to the home, how video augments and evolves public safety, and the impact media and analytics can have on retail and enterprise operations.
Technologies that Ruff and his team are currently focused on include next-generation video and multimedia. With the increasing amount of video content available to consumers, video is quickly finding its way into a variety of new experiences. Ruff is focused on marketing the research and development in these areas from the Center into real-world experiences and hopes to bring the value and success of the Center in creating next-generation products to commercialization through the Motorola business units.
Ruff has been involved in the evolution of the mobile and wireless data and communications industry in a number of ways and has also led internal Motorola start-up efforts in new data and multimedia communications services. In these efforts, exploration and innovation is the component that makes Ruff passionate about his work, as it allows him to experiment and push the envelope to constantly stay ahead of the curve. Within the Center, Ruff has start-up-like experiences within a big company, which allows him the opportunity to actually bring research and innovation to devices and applications to change the way consumers interact and consume content.
Ruff first joined Motorola in 1989 and has served as senior manager of the Wireless Data Group, director of Business Development for the Platform Software Division as well as senior director of technology acquisitions for the Center. As one of the founders of Motorola’s internally focused Early Accelerator team, Ruff provided business development leadership of key importance to the acquisition of technologies and business opportunities to support future research efforts. Ruff then served as chief of staff for the Chief Technology Officer beginning in 2005 and was responsible for technology product marketing for nearly three years.
Prior to joining the Chief Technology Office, Ruff was senior director of Portfolio Marketing for Motorola’s Internet Services and Content Group positioning, where he directed the group’s efforts in new Internet services and experiences on mobile devices. At the forefront of the evolution in mobile networking, Ruff helped double the size of the first analog cellular network in the U.K. and led product marketing and business development for Motorola’s early forays into WLANs, wireless corporate e-mail, camera phones and synchronization technologies.
Ruff has a Bachelor’s honor degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Brunel University in England. An energetic and strong believer in participative efforts, Ruff was one of Motorola’s leadership team members in the Wireless Application Forum (now OMA), Symbian, and the SyncML Forum and a judge in 2007 for Chicago’s Science in the City Top Ten Scientific Achievements.