Roland Harwood
Roland is Director of Open Innovation at NESTA. He heads up NESTA's Connect programme, which supports innovation through extreme collaboration.
Flagship projects include working with Sir Tim Berners-Lee on the future of the web, an open innovation challenge with Procter & Gamble sourcing $100m innovations, and working with Imperial College and the Royal College of Art on an interdisciplinary design-led business incubator.
Roland also sits on various boards and committees including Distance Lab, Design London, EPSRC, and several start-up technology companies.
He is passionate about connecting people and ideas, and has a breadth of interests and experience across a range of industries.
Graduating with a PhD in Physics from Edinburgh University, he started his career as a research scientist for EA Technology focusing on ultrasonic imaging for a consortium of Global Utility companies.
He worked as a commissioning editor at IET where he was responsible for developing new media services, including joint ventures with BT & IBM.
Most recently, at LDA, he developed and launched gateway2investment, an investment readiness programme that has worked with hundreds of start-up technology companies and helped them to raise venture capital in excess of £26m.
He also led on the launch of London's first £6m Proof of Concept Seed Fund in partnership with 24 universities.
Roland is a proud and exhausted dad of two boys under three, and for the past 12 years has also worked freelance as a music producer for SonyBMG, writing numerous soundtracks for TV and film, including for the film American Psycho, Property Ladder and the Cosby Show.