Martin McCourt Keynote Speaker

Martin McCourt has spent over 35 years working at the heart of global manufacturing, design and marketing for quality brands such as Dyson, Mars, Duracell, Toshiba and Pelikan.

Martin was the CEO of Dyson for 15 years, the ideas to market-leading consumer products maker. As CEO, he devised and implemented a strategy that transformed the company from a single product, single market producer into one where 80% of the business comes from 52 markets around the world. In that time he increased UK skilled jobs, grew profits tenfold and enabled James Dyson to keep on inventing. In 2011 Dyson hit £1bn revenue for the first time.  Martin was directly responsible for the establishment of Dyson subsidiaries in the USA, Japan, Switzerland, Austria and Germany. In total he took Dyson into over 50 markets, achieving market leadership in the majority including the USA.

In 2012, Martin joined the private equity firm Montagu as a Director. He is currently Chairman of CAP and CliniSys Group (CliniSys). Cap is the market leading automotive intelligence company that provides the automotive sector with data related to used car values, future value projections as well as total cost of ownership for individual vehicles. CliniSys is a pan-European supplier of IT systems to clinical laboratories.  It is the market leading supplier in Europe of clinical laboratory information management systems.

Martin has also held the Chairmanship role for a leading logistics container shipping company and a global industrial Sales business, both within the Montagu Portfolio. In addition to his Chairmanships Martin advises Montagu’s investment teams on its acquisitions.

His current chair and non-executive positions include Weber, the most recognized name in the world for barbecue grills, FreeFlow Technologies,  a dynamic UK start-up, developing a lightweight compact, high performance e-bike drive system that is backed by Williams Applied Engineering and Foresight PE and Headbox – a web based platform which enables the sharing of inspiring places for people to have meetings.

Martin explores the importance of innovation, the role of leadership, and the differences (and similarities) between large and small businesses in a passionate, humorous and insightful presentation. He looks at growing a business in challenging times, expanding overseas, and the importance of manufacturing and export to the European economy.