Keynote - Doug Richard: The Entrepreneurs' Revolution

 

We're very pleased to welcome Doug Richard, founder of the School for Startups, to the NCIIA Annual Conference. Doug is a leading proponent and practitioner of entrepreneurship in the United Kingdom and the U.S. In his keynote address, Doug will discuss entrepreneurship, its importance in the modern economy, and the role of government and universities in catalysing entrepreneurship. Doug will talk about:

Why the public interest is best served by self-interest;
Why the most successful enterprises are all social enterprises;
Why entreprenuers are never born only made;
Why the US must learn to export entrepreneurship not merely to the rest of the world but the rest of the nation;
Why governments can only create playing fields;
Why capital is not what limits the rate of entreprenuership; and
Why universities are our best hope for cultural change.

He's known to many as a TV star - he appeared in the first two series of the Dragon's Den, a show that sees entrepreneurs pitching for investment from some of Britain's top business brains.

Doug brings with him a considerable entrepreneurial pedigree. He's the founder of School for Startups, Chairman and CEO of Trutap, founder and member of the Cambridge Angels, Chairman of the Conservative Party Small Business Task Force, director of Pearl Software and non-executive director of BeatsDigital.

In 2006 Doug was an Honorary Recipient of The Queen's Award for Enterprise Promotion. In 2007, he became a fellow of the RSA and in July 2009 was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Essex.

Doug is a successful entrepreneur with 20 years' experience in the development and leadership of technology and software ventures, both in the US and in the UK. Between 1996 and 2000 he was President and CEO of Micrografx, a US publicly quoted software company. Prior to that he also founded and subsequently sold two other companies: Visual Software and ITAL Computers. Doug holds a BA in Psychology from University of California at Berkeley and a Juris Doctor at the school of Law, University of California at Los Angeles.