Richard Granger
MSc CPhys MInstP MIOD
Summary experience
Richard Granger is an independent advisor, coach and lecturer with a lifetime’s experience in research, development, and the management of technology and innovation. He works with senior managers and teams to improve their organisations’ capabilities and performance in these areas and to help bring new technology to market.
His chief interests are in technology strategy and commercialisation; the management of R&D; and the organisational and cultural issues involved in technology transfer and in stimulating innovation. He has worked in these areas as an advisor to leading corporations in many industries – including semiconductors, engineering, utilities, consumer electronics, oil & gas, steel and healthcare – and for national and regional governments, universities and other public sector bodies.
Representative work
His advisory work with industrial clients is mainly to help them to develop new technology management skills. Often, this includes developing a real strategy for the firm, as well as training and coaching; the managers involved ‘learn by doing’. For example, he worked with senior managers across the global engineering group ABB to design and implement a new approach to technology strategy for the entire group. One outcome was a revised approach to investment in power semiconductors. He has been invited back several times since, to help individual business units to update their technology strategies.
His industrial clients have included: ABB (Engineering, Sweden/Germany/Switzerland); Arcelik (Consumer white goods, Turkey); BP (Oil & Gas, UK); British Sugar (Agrifood, UK); Doosan (Engineering, South Korea); Eni (Oil & Gas, Italy); Ericsson (Telecommunications, Sweden/China); Gambro (Medical equipment, Sweden); GDF-Suez (Utilities, France/Belgium); Lafarge (Construction materials, France); LG (Electronics, South Korea); London Underground (Transport, UK); Mapna (Engineering, Iran); PetroChina (Oil & Gas, China); Petronas (Oil & Gas, Malaysia); Philips (Consumer electronics, Netherlands/Singapore/Brazil); POSCO (Steel, South Korea); Schneider (Engineering, France/Singapore); Shell (Oil & Gas, Netherlands); Tate & Lyle (Food ingredients, UK).
In the public sector, his work includes both skills development and public policy. As an example of skills-related work, he led a nine-year programme to restructure Poland’s national applied R&D system, in preparation for Poland’s joining the European Union. Much of this involved helping individual R&D institutes to learn to manage themselves more as market-driven commercial enterprises, reducing their dependence on public grant support.
As examples of public policy work, he guided the government of the Czech Republic, as the expert provided to that country by the European Commission, through the development of its regional innovation smart specialisation strategies; he advised the government of Ghana on revising that country’s national innovation system to stimulate new technology-based start-ups; he advised the Canadian government on the development of a new national R&D strategy for the forest products sector; he helped to develop Ireland’s national guidelines for the commercialisation of the results of collaborative industry-university research; and recently he led a multinational team advising the European Commission on innovation in the transport sector and policy options for the European Union’s future transport strategy.
He has also been an adviser on strategy issues for several universities and national research institutes, for example in the UK, Abu Dhabi, Italy, Kuwait and Malaysia.
His work includes hands-on responsibility for bringing new technology to market. He was recently the director of a £600k project to commercialise a novel sensor technology in the rail industry. Earlier in his career, he was the director responsible for the team that pioneered the single-chip implementation of the Bluetooth NFC protocol – the technology was spun out to create Cambridge Silicon Radio, a business listed on the London Stock Exchange and valued at $2.4billion at its sale to Qualcomm in 2015. He has also led two start-up companies, in artificial intelligence and marine engineering.
Experience
He teaches technology strategy at Masters’ level at Royal Holloway, University of London, and contributes to executive education programmes at Chalmers University in Gothenburg, Sweden, where he was also at one time co-director of a Master’s programme in technology management. He was previously a visiting professor in technology management at a leading South African business school and has taught at Manchester and Cass Business Schools, Henley Management College, Queen Mary University of London and Insead.
He is a Senior Associate with the international consulting firm Arthur D Little and, in addition to his own consulting practice, frequently contributes to Arthur D Little engagements. He was until 2002 a director and Vice President of Arthur D Little and a member of the leadership team of the firm’s global Technology & Innovation Management Practice.
In the first part of his career, he spent 20 years at Cambridge Consultants Ltd, a commercial applied research and development centre in Cambridge, UK. He led many projects to bring new technology to market, mainly for industrial applications such as process control and instrumentation and using optical and electronic techniques. He also led projects in underwater acoustics and airborne radar for military applications. He was for a time commercial director, responsible for contract negotiation and project delivery. He was also responsible for the firm’s partnerships with universities and other external resources; and for the launch of several spin-out businesses.
Qualifications
His academic background includes a first degree in physics and a Master’s degree by research in solid-state physics, at the University of Sheffield. He is a Chartered Physicist and a member of the Institute of Physics and of the Institute of Directors in the UK; and a member of the European Industrial Research Management Association. In Brussels, he is a vice-president of Knowledge4Innovation, which organises discussions on innovation-related topics between industry and politicians inside the European Parliament; and director of the representative office of Technology Partners Foundation, a Polish Centre for Advanced Technology.
