Most recently John has been a mentor on the Royal Academy of Engineering’s ‘Leaders in Innovation Fellowship’ programme, mentoring start-ups from Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia in various areas from tech to materials science, fintech and app development.
 
Alongside this he is a tech ethicist, working for start-ups and companies and the UK’s Digital Catapult on embedding ethics and responsible innovation into tech companies working in AI, Digital Ledger Technologies (Blockchain), social impact and materials development.
 
As an Honorary Fellow at Cambridge Judge Business School, John teaches the IP Elective of their Masters in Studies in Entrepreneurship programme and is a supervisor on their major projects programme.
 
Until 2020 John was Operations & Commercialisation Director at Imperial College’s government-funded national Synthetic Biology start-up facility, SynbiCITE. He has a wealth of experience in the science and technology start-up world & is very active in the sector, particularly in entrepreneurship training with business start-up to amplifying scale-up.

John helps with science or deep-tech ventures in many areas; he’s very experienced at supporting a wide variety of start-ups, providing business and entrepreneurship training globally, & judges on multiple business pitching events worldwide.
 
He’s had a varied portfolio career including R&D, industrial and retail materials product development (lab-created diamond) and manufacturing, technical sales, business development, international development for a trade association, innovation & digital creativity growth, in educational services, as an NED for a biotech company, as a director for a medical imaging company where he was part of a successful exit, leading the Innovate UK ‘Emerging Technologies and Industries programme, and as a trained chef.
 
Throughout his careers John has run his own ‘Disruptive Technologies & Innovations Management’ consultancy – Innovation Foundry Ltd. – & continues to work with a diverse spread of technologies, from biotechnology to lab-grown meat to plastics recovery-to-reprocessing technology to AI, mentoring and supporting wherever needed.
 
John also sits on a variety of Programme Expert Groups for the UK National Measurement System operated by DSIT (the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology).
 
He’s also Chair and Director of the world’s oldest technology networking club – the Real Time Club (est. 1967).