Rob Noble, an Australian, joined the MTR as Transport Planner in 1976, and subsequently became the Marketing and Planning Director. One of his key responsibilities was ticketing, being intimately involved with MTR’s magnetic multi-ride and stored value tickets, the precursors to the Octopus. Sometimes called “the Father of Octopus”, he was in the right place at the right time to be the driving force in cajoling the five major public transport operators to set up Octopus Cards Ltd (OCL) in 1994. He was the first CEO of OCL. He has a Bachelor of Civil Engineering Degree, a Master’s Degree in Transportation Science, and an MBA, the latter from the University of Hong Kong.

Noble was the key “insider”, and gained unique insights and understandings of the Octopus project over a 10-year period from the time contactless smart card technology first emerged in the early 1990s, till leaving OCL in 2001.