Mark's been involved with innovation for almost the whole of his life, certainly since his teenage years when his father – a researcher, inventor and innovator [though he preferred the word ‘engineer’] – realised Mark would be a good lab rat.
Mark is also one of those rare animals who’s developed long and successful track records at the highest levels of the digital and creative industries, in multiple disciplines - as a creative practitioner, as a business lead, as an economic development strategist, and latterly as the guiding force behind CivTech Scotland, the world’s first successful public-sector-focused innovation accelerator. With the ability to range from big visions to the tiniest detail, he couples strategy with successful, genuine and impactful on-the-ground effort.
He graduated from St Martin’s School of Art, London and became London’s [and probably the world’s] youngest commercials editor, then its youngest commercials director, making films across the world for clients including Coca Cola, Walt Disney, Volkswagen, Ford, Unilever and Procter & Gamble. Business-wise, he first took charge of the fortunes of a start-up at the age of 22 and helped it grow into one of the most successful commercials post-production companies around.
It means he’s worked in, and with, start-ups and SMEs pretty much ever since.
At the same time as working in film Mark took on many other challenges. In 1996 he became the world’s first Creative Head of a Premiership football club – helping to massively increase the brand power and commercial activities of [the then fashionable] Middlesbrough AFC. He was also co-founder and creative head of radical and highly successful training company ClickHere Ltd – sold to Tanfield Plc in 2003.
Mark has also sat on numerous advisory and regulatory boards at local, regional and national level, including Audiences North East, the Film and Television Skills Advisory Group, North East England [2003 – 2007], the Tees Valley Learning and Skills Council [2002 – 2006], and the Creative Industries Advisory Group Member, ONE North East [2001 – 2005].
In 2003 he took over DigitalCity in the Tees Valley, North East England: in the eleven years under his leadership it went from ‘troubled’ paper exercise to a fully-fledged and brilliantly successful creative and digital cluster initiative, acknowledged as one of the greatest projects of its type anywhere in Europe.
Mark was its 'architect' and champion, and with a mission to create and maintain a vibrant, successful and self-sustaining digital and creative supercluster. It delivered everything a regeneration project should do [which they often don't], including massive company growth, hundreds of jobs, significant private sector investment and huge local economic impact. In his time there, Middlesbrough – the centre of the initiative - went from plumb bottom of over 400 areas in England to fourth place in terms of the proportion of high-growth-potential tech companies [Experian]; and in 2013 it was identified by the Financial Times as one of the UK’s digital hotspots – the only one in the UK north of Birmingham. Key partners in the DigitalCity were the region’s local authorities, and with DigitalCity actually based out of Middlesbrough Council, Mark became all too aware of the challenges and barriers faced by councils – especially those that are custodians of deprived areas.
Mark’s history in tech has been a long one. The film industry has always been an early adopter, and Mark ordered some of the first non-linear editing systems for the editing company he ran back in the 1980s. At DigitalCity he started his long association with tech accelerators: there in 2009 he co-founded The Difference Engine – Europe’s first true, intensive tech accelerator, and on moving to Scotland in 2014, designed and executed Scotland’s first accelerator – the UP Accelerator. And in 2015 he was part of the team that gor CivTech off the ground. Now, some 90 or so Challenges later, it’s regarded as a singular success story, acknowledged in the Uk as the ‘gold standard’ in innovation systems, and internationally.
CivTech is a key component of the Scottish Government’s transformation strategy, centred on driving daring and innovation in the Scottish public sector by collaboratively solving challenges to make people’s lives better, with an absolute focus on citizen-centred design and co-development, it pure and simple ‘tech for good’.
He still walks the walk creatively and is currently developing a potentially huge cross-gender, worldwide children’s entertainment franchise - a future-based action-adventure story universe the world’s most popular sport, at its heart.
He lives in Edinburgh, Scotland with his wife Janet Archer. And when he has time he escapes to the wonderful, rugged landscapes surrounding the city because he’s a passionate, 'double badass' [for those of you who know the Rules of Cycling], but very slow cyclist.
