Professional Career:

2003-2008: MD and Editor, Gibson Index Ltd, a company that has pioneered the world’s first comprehensive index of small technology companies of any nation. www.gibson-index.com. Subscribers include the UK’s trade ministry, the DTI, defence research agency QinetiQ plc, and the US arm of Procter & Gamble.

More than 27,700 SMEs researched, profiled and rated, with another 1200 being added each month. Company revenues are growing by 50% a year. Also co-authored book ‘Bootstrapping Your Business’, published in the US by Adams Media, 2005.

2001-2003:

• Editor of ‘Free Radicals’ newsletter, re-launched in 2005 as Gibson Index Newsletter, a monthly publication on UK technology SMEs, innovation, and academic enterprise.
• Editor also of special reports into innovation and enterprise, eg. Universities UK report into academic spinout companies; ‘Whither NZ?’, New Zealand Government report into path of future national innovation.
• Editor: NESTA – Report on UK Inventors and Innovation.
• Senior Researcher: Universities UK report into links between Universities and the Creative Industries.

1997 to 2003: Technology Correspondent at The Financial Times, around 300 articles and a Monthly Column on ‘Using the Broadband Internet’, on world-class new technology, small hi-tech companies, clusters and the whole process of and innovation: (Sections: Inside Track, Weekend Section, FT-IT, and various supplements).

1990 to early-1997: The European newspaper, firstly Senior Sub-Editor, news and features, from 1992, a Features Reporter for the news, features and business desks, London, reporting from Bosnia, Atlanta Olympics, Siberia, Florida space launches, sinking of the ferry ‘Estonia’, Seville Expo 1992, high speed trains around Europe, big infrastructure projects – just some of the hundreds of foreign assignments undertaken on technology and innovation subjects.

1989-1990: The Observer and Sunday Telegraph newspapers, sub-editor, news and features, London.

1981-1989: BBC Radio Newsroom, London: copytaster and desk editor, Summaries and Bulletins Desk, Radios 2 and 4, having joined first in BBC Broadcasting Research. [My research outline was chosen as blueprint for the BBC's Domesday Project in 1986.]

Other writing and research projects:

• Writer of documentary on British political system and regulation for NHK TV, Tokyo (in wake of Japan's 'Recruit' scandal).
• Proof-reader/’stone sub-editor’: Saturdays, Mail on Sunday newspaper, London, 1993-96.
• Strategy planner and Researcher: BBC’s Domesday Project, 1986: UK-wide survey for 900th anniversary of writing of Domesday Book [UK survey] by William I of Normandy in 1086.

1976-1977: Lumberjack in Northern Ontario, Island Lake lumber camp, Chapleau, Canada.

1977-1981: Started first business - delivering newly made Jaguar, Vauxhall, Ford cars from the UK to British professionals living and working in Europe. Not one accident; but many near misses.

Education:

1964-1971: Durlston Court Prep School, New Milton, Hampshire, England.
1971-1976: Stowe School, Buckingham.