About
Tom is a Design Director at IDEO in London, where he uses the innovation and design process to develop new business opportunities. A serial entrepreneur and angel investor, Tom has first-hand experience in building successful enterprises and, as a result, a very thorough understanding of business. He is particularly interested in commercializing new products and services, and his clients include technology, retail, FMCG, financial services, hospitality and fashion brands.
Tom founded and now co-leads OpenIDEO with Nathan Waterhouse, an open innovation platform, which won a 2011 Webby Award in the Community Category.
Prior to university, Tom spent a year teaching secondary school in Tanzania, contributing to his belief in the power of entrepreneurship for sustainable social good. At university, Tom earned a bachelor’s degree in physics, with first class honors, from the University of Bristol and an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he received the Baker Scholar Award of high distinction. In 1998, after finishing his university degree, he joined British sports car manufacturer Marcos Sales Ltd., where he became Managing Director and transformed the loss-making company into a profitable enterprise by diversifying the company into race cars and road cars. He sold the company in 1999. In 2000, he founded Fluid Conditioning Systems Ltd. to commercialise the Magnom™, a patented magnetic filtration innovation system, now used in a diverse range of industries, including Formula 1. Current customers include Ferrari F1, Ducati, JCB and Fernox. He oversaw expansion of the company operations to the United States.
Tom regularly speaks on the topics of entrepreneurship, design thinking, open innovation and industry disruption. He was listed in WIRED UK’s top 100 “digital power brokers” and regularly posts to his blog weijiblog.com.
Follow @thulme on Twitter.