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Paul van Riel

The Cecil Green Enterprise Award was presented to Paul van Riel for his role in founding Jason Geosystems in 1986 and for overseeing its evolution from small start-up to industry leader in inversion and reservoir characterization technology. The complete background is given in van Riel's award citation on page 179 of this issue.

van Riel

Jason existed as a private company for 15 years, with offices around the world, before being purchased by Fugro in December 2001. Thus, van Riel has viewed the modern geophysical business environment from virtually all points on the spectrum and, in this interview with TLE editor Dean Clark, shares his perspective on the recent past and immediate future.

The part of your citation that just leaps out is "his experience at EnTec ... at this juncture Paul decided that establishing a high-tech company was what he wanted to accomplish." So, what exactly triggered the entreprenuerial impulse?

What Entec showed is that with just a few very motivated people, you can quickly get new stuff off the ground. In addition, you do not necessarily have to be a big service company to get the interest of large oil companies.

So, if you have an idea and have like-minded people around you, are not risk averse and relish a challenge, what is there to stop you from going for it?

You seem to be saying that there will always be a need for small companies and, perhaps, that they are absolutely necessary for geophysical techology to advance. Is that a correct interpretation?

I am not sure if small companies/start-ups are absolutely necessary to drive technology advances. However, it certainly seems our market works that way. In the last decade or so, many of the major innovations have come out of start-up/small companies. A couple of examples: seismic . . . [Full Text of this Article]