Richard Harris

Summary

Richard has a forty year track record, both as an innovator and as an enabler of innovation. He works with his own companies and with enterprises ranging from the large to the very small, and from the long-established to start-ups. He's not just about ideas and their technologies, but about helping create ecosystems for innovation, where the feedback between ideas, market, and organisational capacity, culture and process engenders a continuous cycle of innovation in ever-changing markets. With a background as a behavioural ecologist, evolutionary biologist and computer scientist, Richard adopts an agile and pervasive approach to innovation. He specialises in data intelligence systems which enable collaboration, insight and forecasting in dynamic information environments. He has worked with companies including Apple, Intel, Microsoft, AT&T Labs, SAS Institut, the BBC, The Royal Opera House, Comic Relief, The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund (Europe) and Bioss International. He also acts as an assessor for UK R&D grant funding applications. He has co-founded a number of start-ups: The Digital Village (Multiple & Social Media - co-founded with Douglas Adams and other figures from the media industries); The Do Lab (incubator in media technology and data intelligence); Connect TV (hybrid streaming technology and service); udu, Inc (SaaS platform for self-organising data intelligence); BCB (Community fibre broadband) and Intelligent Reality Ltd (BlueGlobe – geospatial data intelligence and visualisation platform for environmental and public health applications) A number of these start-ups have spun off from Two Worlds, his incubator and consultancy. His teams have won a number of awards: at The Digital Village: Starship Titanic won the CODiE award for best new adventure game & was twice BAFTA nominated. With Two Worlds/The Do Lab: Winner of BBC Innovation Labs, with SlipStream (content and social network metadata integration and device control platform). With BCB: Stirling Civic Award; Scottish Rural Innovators Award. With Intelligent Reality: 2022 CogX AI Award for Best Climate Change Innovation and a UK nominee for the 2022 Earthshot Prize, both with BlueGlobe. Beyond his technology work, Richard has also won the Sri Lankan national photographic competition, was elected to BAFTA in 2010 and he and his partner won UK renovation of the year for the eco-renovation of their Georgian farmhouse in Perthshire. He has worked across Europe, North America and Central Africa, and in Russia. He co-holds patents in streaming technology and adaptive data intelligence.