After 30 years as an academic, 15 years at the University of Warwick, and 13 years of research around the Hub-of-All-Things (HAT), I’ve accepted the role of Principal Fellow at the HAT Community Foundation (HCF). (See announcement here)
It’s an interesting decision, because I’ve also been saying for some time that I want to retire.
When I left Warwick earlier this year, I thought long and hard about whether to join another university. There were good reasons to do so. I still have two books to write, papers to finish, and a substantial body of commissioned research, policy work and thought leadership that needs an institutional home. But I really didn’t want to return to university life. This long summer has taught me something important. I wanted to retire from university life as an institution. Not from its pursuits. Not from intellectual inquiry, research and the pursuit of new ideas. Not from creating impact, advising governments and institutions, or championing causes I believe in. And certainly not from mentoring, teaching and developing the next generation of thinkers and doers. In fact, I want to do more of all these things, not less. What I wanted to leave behind was the institutional machinery, the obligations and constraints that increasingly got in the way of the very things I loved about being an academic.
A good friend (shout out to you, David!) told me it was time to turn on my “sensei mode.” I rather liked that!
Because perhaps that’s what this next chapter is really about. Not stepping away from academic pursuits, but finding a different way to pursue them. With greater freedom, bigger ambitions, and a team of apprentices, mentees and collaborators to do it with.
And the HAT Community Foundation turns out to be just the right home for that.
From nano and micro to meso. And now, macro.
Much of my academic career has been spent trying to understand how value is created, how firms and consumers behave, and how markets work.
At the nano level, I’ve studied behaviours, interactions and the ways individuals experience and create value.
At the micro level, I’ve worked on products, services, business models and firms — how value is proposed, co-created, and captured.
At the meso level, my research moved into markets, ecosystems and economic coordination. How do multiple actors interact to create value? How do we design markets that enable participation and exchange? What institutions, information and coordination mechanisms make them possible?
The HAT research programme, the invention of the HAT Microserver and Dataswyft Wallet, and the market design of the TruSignal Network have all been part of this intellectual journey.
Over the past 13 years, one argument has become increasingly clear to me:
Data rights aren’t just good for humans. They’re good for businesses, markets and economic growth.
When individuals and businesses have rights over their data, information can become more visible, portable and reusable. People and enterprises that conventional systems cannot see can demonstrate their value. New products, services and markets can emerge. Capital can reach people and businesses that have previously been excluded.
Data rights are therefore not merely about privacy or protection. They are also productive economic rights. But rights alone are not enough. Their economic potential depends on how markets, institutions and governance arrangements are designed.
And that brings me to my next chapter.
I want to move to the macro.
To the regulatory, governance and institutional architecture of data and digital economies.
I want to engage much more actively with governments, policymakers and institutions to champion data rights, advise on the economics of participation, and help design the conditions under which new digital markets can emerge and flourish. My next book will have much more to say about the economics of participation!
I want to make the case that enabling individuals and businesses to participate meaningfully in the data economy is not simply a social or ethical objective. It is an economic one, with profound implications for productivity, innovation, market formation, financial inclusion and growth.
And I don’t just want to write about it.
I want to help make it happen.
Why a foundation, and not another university?
Because I want to be more active in shaping the policy and institutional agenda, not simply studying it.
Universities are wonderful places for research, scholarship and intellectual inquiry. I have benefited enormously from my academic career and the many colleagues I’ve worked with. But universities also come with institutional constraints. The demands of teaching, administration, funding structures and internal priorities can make it difficult to devote sustained attention to advocacy, policy engagement and real-world institutional change. At this stage of my career, I want the freedom to work directly with governments, policymakers, businesses and communities, across borders and disciplines. I want to bring economics, market design and technology together with regulation, public policy and governance. I want to move between research, advocacy and implementation without constantly negotiating institutional boundaries.
The HAT Community Foundation is particularly well placed for this.
The Foundation champions data rights, sovereignty and agency, and acts as a constitutional guardian of data networks operating on HAT principles. It is concerned not only with developing ideas but also with ensuring that technologies, markets and institutions operate in ways that uphold the rights and interests of the people whose data makes them possible.
This is exactly where I want to focus my energy.
Sensei mode: building a team, not just passing on knowledge
Perhaps the most personally important reason for joining HCF is that I don’t want to pursue this next chapter alone.
Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of working with many talented researchers, designers, entrepreneurs and younger colleagues. Some have become close collaborators. Others have become mentees and apprentices. I’ve always believed that the best learning happens through doing. Through working on difficult problems, challenging assumptions, designing solutions, making mistakes and taking responsibility for outcomes. I want to create an environment where my apprentices and mentees can thrive. Where they can work alongside me on real problems, develop their own intellectual interests, experiment with new ideas and become leaders in their own right. Not just another research group producing papers.
A team that thinks, designs, builds, challenges and makes things happen.
That, to me, is what sensei mode should be about. I still want to be intellectually active. I still want to write, argue, design markets and engage with difficult ideas. But increasingly, I want to do that with a team, developing the next generation of thinkers and practitioners who can take these ideas much further. HATLAB Studio, operating through the Foundation, provides an exciting opportunity to do this. It brings together a community of specialists in the data and digital economy, connecting research, policy, education, innovation and market development. I want the Studio to be a place where people learn by doing, where expertise is shared rather than guarded, and where ideas are tested against the realities of institutions, businesses, communities and markets. And where my mentees and apprentices have the space and support to build something of their own.
I suppose that’s my version of retirement.
Research without borders — or FEC-king overheads
There are also some very practical reasons for choosing a foundation. Much of my work is international. Data rights, digital markets and economic coordination do not fit neatly within national boundaries. Neither do the people and organisations trying to advance them. A foundation gives us the freedom to assemble teams around problems rather than institutional affiliations, collaborate across countries and work directly with organisations that need our expertise. And it allows us to be much more efficient with project funding. Anyone who has worked on university-funded research will be familiar with Full Economic Costing (FEC) and the overhead structures that come with it. I appreciate that universities have real costs to cover. But there comes a point when the machinery supporting research becomes so expensive and cumbersome that it constrains what the research can actually achieve. Frankly, I’ve had enough of FEC-king overheads.
At HCF, we can design projects around the resources genuinely needed to deliver them. More of the money can go towards researchers, apprentices, collaborators, experiments, technology development and real-world impact. And we can move faster.
For someone who has spent years trying to translate research into working technologies, businesses and markets, that freedom matters enormously.
Universities are having their own identity crisis
There is another reason I’m not rushing to join another university. I think higher education is going through a profound identity crisis, and AI is accelerating it. When knowledge can be generated, explained, challenged and recombined by increasingly capable AI systems, what exactly is the university’s distinctive contribution? What should students be paying for? What does it mean to teach, assess or even be an expert? And what happens when AI moves beyond being a tool and becomes an increasingly autonomous participant in research, learning and knowledge production? I have plenty of opinions about all this. Probably enough for another book! But I don’t particularly want to go anywhere near the institutional machinery of higher education until it decides what it wants to be when it grows up in an AI world. I’d rather watch from a comfortable distance. 😄
That doesn’t mean I’ve lost interest in education. Quite the opposite.
I want to explore new ways of learning, mentoring and developing expertise that connect directly to designing, experimenting, building and creating impact. And I want to do that with people who are there because they want to learn and make things happen, not simply because they need another qualification.
From research to policy, learning and impact
There is a tendency to treat research, education, innovation, commercialisation and public policy as separate activities. Research produces knowledge. Teaching transfers it. Innovation applies it. Businesses commercialise it. Governments regulate the consequences.
But in the real world, these activities are deeply connected.
A market design idea needs to be tested. Testing reveals new research questions. Building technology exposes institutional problems. Policy changes what markets can do. Working with communities changes how we understand value. And mentoring others to tackle these challenges often generates the next innovation. I want to work across all of these activities, with a team, without having to ask which institutional department each activity belongs to. Through HCF and HATLAB Studio, I hope to bring together research, policy engagement, learning and experimentation into a more integrated approach to institutional and economic change.
The Foundation will also provide a home for the accumulated intellectual work of the HAT programme — including academic papers, commissioned research, policy briefs, books and other thought pieces. Through the HATLAB Studio Paper Series, work that might otherwise remain buried in project archives or private commissions can be made available for public reading and debate. I particularly like the principle that regardless of who commissions a piece of research or requests an opinion, the intellectual output should be open to scrutiny and discussion. Knowledge should travel and ideas should be put to work.
So, am I retiring?
Yes. Sort of.
This summer has helped me understand that I don’t want to retire from the things that made academic life meaningful to me. I want to retire from the institutional constraints that made pursuing them increasingly difficult. My academic journey has taken me from understanding individual behaviours and value creation at the nano level, to products, firms and business models at the micro level, and markets, ecosystems and economic coordination at the meso level.
Now I want to bring that thinking to the macro level — to the institutions, regulatory frameworks and governance arrangements that will shape the next generation of digital economies.
I want to champion data rights as economic rights. I want to work with governments on the economics of participation. And I want to do it with a team of apprentices, mentees and collaborators who will carry this work forward.
After 13 years of HAT research, it feels fitting that this next chapter should be based at the very Foundation established to protect and advance the principles behind that work.
I’m delighted to be joining the HAT Community Foundation as Principal Fellow.
Less institutional obligation. More intellectual freedom. Bigger ambitions. And a new generation to build them with.
Sensei mode: ON. 🚀
If you’re interested in joining me at the Foundation, reach out and let’s discuss!