Martha Russell, Networking the Future of Games. The mandate for fun has spread like wildfire across many business sectors, fueling many startups and sparking alliances among seemingly unlikely partners. The compelling lure of play is visible in the web of relationships at leadership levels across key founder, executive and financing roles in start-up and growth companies define the relationship capital and shared vision of the emerging sectors. Patterns of deals and alliances among game companies and their ecosystem partners reveal the flows of information, talent, and financial resources. There is no pause button.

An early user of virtual worlds for technical meetings, Martha Russell’s background spans a range of business development, innovation and technology-transfer initiatives in information sciences, agriculture, communications, and information sciences. She studies the relational capital of innovation ecosystems using a data-driven network science approach. She helped build the identity of Poppin’ Fresh, one of the longest running celebrity avatars, and has competed in sand castle competitions with creations of Myst.