About Robin Gaster

Dr. Robin Gaster is president of Incumetrics Inc. (a data and program evaluation consultancy), a visiting scholar at George Washington University, and a nationally recognized expert on innovation and small business. Following a PhD from UC Berkeley and a BA from Oxford University, Gaster taught at the University of Virginia, and worked in the IMF board room. He was awarded a Congressional Fellowship. He has since developed a consulting business serving clients seeking to understand the intersection of technology, innovation, economics, and politics. Clients include thinktanks like Brookings and the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy; foreign governments (Sweden, Finland); big companies like Houghton Mifflin and Deloitte; firms with interests in specific sectors like education, publishing, and energy; and a host of smaller bespoke projects as well. His work has been published in Foreign Policy and the Atlantic, he edited a book on international telecommunications, and he has testified before Congress. In 2004, he joined a major project at the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine where he was lead researcher and principal writer on a multi-volume series of reports that became the gold standard for assessing US government innovation programs for small businesses. Dr. Gaster also started a local online information service in partnership with the Electric Power Research Institute, was CEO of a small software company that made business software, and partnered with Deloitte and Touche to build a cutting edge information service covering the internet and telecoms in the mid-1990s.