Joseph Ball Costello (born December 6, 1953) is an American executive in the electronic design automation (EDA) industry.
[2] He started his career at National Semiconductor, which he soon left to found "Electronic Speech Systems".
He entered the EDA industry when James Solomon invited him to SDA Systems, where he rapidly rose to senior management.
In 2001, Joseph gave the commencement address at Harvey Mudd, two days after the sudden death of Douglas Adams, who had been scheduled to speak.
[3] He was formerly the CEO of think3, a product lifecycle management software and consulting company, and of Orb Networks.