Walter Hehl started his career as physicist and development engineer at IBM’s development laboratory in Böblingen (Germany) where he was for many years responsible for advanced developments and innovation for systems and software. After a sabbatical year as professor for software technology at the Technical University of Dresden, he became the content manager for IBM’s European Industry Solutions Lab, first in Stuttgart (Germany), then directly in the IBM Research Lab Zurich. This Industry Solutions Lab is the European executive briefing center of the Research Division of IBM and a global meeting place of executives and politicians with IBM researchers and consultants.

In this function, he was responsible for the technologies and solutions used to represent actual trends in IBM Research and in the industry. He conducted about 600 innovation workshops with executives from companies and organizations from all over the world. From this unique experience with researchers and developers, consultants and leaders, he wrote until today six books, from technology and management to philosophy:

• A summary on his views and learnings on actual Trends in IT and innovation. The book “Trends in Informationstechnologie – von Nanotechnologie zu Virtuellen Welten” (in German) was published May 2008 by VdF, the publisher of ETH Zurich Technical University,
• his learning’s about the problems of corporate innovation and some solutions in innovation management in the book “Paradoxa und Praxis im Innovationsmanagement” (in German) with Rainer Willmanns, the president of the German Manager’s Association, as coauthor.
• his experiences and insights as physicist and information technologist what we humans can understand (Wissen) and what we think to understand. Today we would use the terms "fake" and real. A key notion is our series of copernications, the fundamental repositions of us,
• a textbook what to learn from computer science in general (software technology): the laws for the construction of systems. The largest system of all, nature, is also identified as consisting of physics and as software on physics. Hehl considers this as modernization of Karl Popper's Three Worlds model,
• a critical survey of Galilei's works with an emphasis on less known facts. The reader learns what is wrong in Galileo's papers due to the Zeitgeist and what is wrong due to his own character. This results in a drastically changed picture for Galilei's personality.
• in the same style a critical survey of the fundaments of religion, mainly of the three abrahamic religions. Topics are, e.g. the senselessness of the notion of a creator, of afterlife and allmightyness.

He is the author of many scientific papers, of popular articles on Information Technology and on the “Singularity”, as well as of several papers on philosophy and religion and the world model with physics and software,

He holds IBM’s 3rd plateau for patent disclosures.