Innovate like Amazon, Set Goals like Google
Richard has 20 years of experience leading innovation, product, business and technology teams at Amazon, Google and Deutsche Bank. He is now an independent consultant and executive coach. His clients include Vodafone Romania, Software AG, Nestlé Purina Europe, POST Luxembourg, IKEA South East Asia, Luxair and LuxairTours, and P&O Ferries, as well as around 50 startups through Luxinnovation's Fit4Start program and his independent coaching work.
Richard helps companies adopt methods he has adapted from Amazon, Google and the startup world that enable people in corporate environments to turn ideas into action and strategy into results. Through these methods, people are empowered to create value for customers in ways that work for the business. He believes that the people best positioned to innovate are those actually doing the work, and that management's role is to empower them — not by doing less, but by doing more.
Clients include IKEA and Nestlé Purina, among others.
2017 – 2021
Helps companies innovate, execute and scale through product innovation and digital strategy. Clients include Nestlé Purina, Software AG, Luxair, IKEA, POST Luxembourg, Vodafone, and more. Founder of Working Backwards, a program and method for collaboration and innovation that accelerates development.
2014 – 2017
Acting Director for Consumer Localization, leading a multi-disciplined team of 100+, translating and localising millions of product listings each day across all of Amazon's marketplaces using machine translation, AI and large-scale data tools. Led 2016 planning with 2.5x revenue growth, and 2017 planning with 2x revenue growth (goals met).
2013 – 2014
MoPowered provides a SaaS solution to online retailers enabling them to sell on mobile. Managed engineering and product. Accelerated releases from quarterly to weekly, created a hiring process and grew the team from 8 to 18 people in 4 months. Redesigned backend and UI, halving merchant integration cost and enabling metrics-driven customer experience improvements.
2012 – 2013
Mobile loyalty app using geolocation to provide personalised service, loyalty rewards and payments. Developed proof of concept, ran a pilot with local coffee shops, discovered the need to pivot to selling to larger chains.
2006 – 2012
Developed tools to enable scaling of map data operations, launching 4x faster with 50% fewer FTEs. Product-managed European Checkout and Wallet features including VAT, Chip-and-PIN, and Contactless Payments. Managed AdSense Broadcast, Publishing and Portal partnerships worth £100M/yr with 80% YoY growth.
2003 – 2006
Ran a DevOps team for Deutsche Bank's online wholesale foreign exchange, bonds and derivatives trading platform, Autobahn. Developed product and white-label release process, launched a new product 3x faster than before. Planned and executed the first successful Business Continuity Test in Global Markets eCommerce.