Categories: Richard Harris People

Richard is the principal of Two Worlds, with an early background in Behavioural Ecology and Computer Science followed by more than twenty years experience as a visionary, strategy and technology consultant, writer and architect and developer of online and interactive services. He is a serial entrepreneur and co-founded The Digital Village (later h2g2), with the author Douglas Adams and others from the media, technology and financial sectors and was its CTO and Research Director. TDV's products included the Codie award-winning interactive game Starship Titanic and for the online Hitch-hiker’s guide to the Galaxy, one of the UK’s most successful knowledge-based online communities, in both its web-based and mobile delivery formats. h2g2 is now part of the BBC, where its technology architecture underpins the BBC’s online communities.

With historical models of organisation, communication and collaboration breaking down, enterprises are looking to create ever more flexible and adaptive environments to create and sustain relationships with their stakeholder communities. Richard helps clients create the thought models, strategies, culture and processes that support flexible and intelligent relationships. He then helps develop, design, demonstrate and select the intelligence systems and collaborative, social and ubiquitous technology architectures that support client needs, from proof-of-concept to full commercial service.

Richard has a history of combining business, creative and technical acumen to create successful, innovative and award-winning products and online services for corporate environments, in consumer entertainment and in public social networks. He works with other entrepreneurs, think tanks and strategic consultancies in the area of disruptive thinking and organisational transformation, bringing to bear his particular focus on combining innovative thought models with ubiquitous technologies.

Richard helped instigate and develop the first major online presence for Comic Relief’s Red Nose Day in 1999 (which took £500,000 in online donations) and was one of the organisers of the second of the seminal Digital Biota conferences on emergence, artificial life and social organisation. He developed the Ubiquity model of identity, trust, value and interaction in connected communities – Two Worlds is now turning that model into a tool for the rapid development of integrated online content and collaboration services. For the EU, Richard has consulted on Research programmes in Emotional Computing, Ubiquitous Systems and Information Ecologies.

The Ubiquity model is also being used to create a service that seeks to engage with people, communities and organisations to share, learn, inspire and enable action on Climate Change. It's called BlueGlobe (http://blueglo.be/) and the first element, an intelligent news aggregator is now in beta.

In March 2008, Two Worlds was winner of the 2008 BBC Innovation Labs competition, with the BBC now funding prototype development of our next-generation platform for Interactive TV.

Richard has consulted to major corporations, government agencies and NGOs, with clients as diverse as Russia's leading TV and film distributor, for whom he is designing a video and tv download business, BIOSS International, Urban Learning Space, SAS, Apple Computer, Intel, AT&T Labs, The International Futures Forum, Comic Relief, The Royal Opera House,The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, Scottish Enterprise, the EU Framework V research programme, the UK Government, Mondex, NatWest bank and Sainsbury's, as well as being founder or co-founder of several start-up companies and other collaborative ventures.

Richard is also a an award-winning photographer and writer, traveller and conservationist. He is a qualified advanced motorcycling instructor, a keen cyclist and a very former ski racer. He is a very amateur Egyptologist and is jointly owned by several Maine Coon cats. He and his partner are currently renovating their 200-year-old farmhouse in the Scottish Highlands, working to combine (hopefully without excessive swearing) the conservation of a historic building with the creation of a modern, inspirational and energy-efficient home.

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