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Rick Eagar

Partner Emeritus

United Kingdom

Rick advises large companies and public organizations on innovation, R&D and technology management, including strategy, organization and performance improvement.

Areas of Focus

Education

University of Bristol
BSc (Hons), Mechanical Engineering

Past Experience

Shell International Petroleum Company
Project Manager, Head of Planning and Cost Engineering Netherlands (N.A.M) / Oman (Petroleum Dev Oman)

Rick is Partner Emeritus at Arthur D. Little and Chairman of the editorial board of ADL’s management journal, PRISM

Rick has over 28 years of consulting experience in technology and innovation management, R&D strategy and organization, and 10 years of industrial experience in capital projects. His sector focus included transport, oil & gas, energy, chemicals, food & drink, nuclear, government, and consumer goods.

Examples of his work included R&D, organizational and process redesign, transformation of national research institutes, new growth strategies, innovation strategies, technology strategies, and benchmarking.

Before becoming Partner Emeritus, Rick was Chief Innovation Officer and Global Leader of the Technology & Innovation Management Practice, responsible for the firm’s functional expertise in innovation, R&D, and technology management.

Rick published on innovation and R&D management and is a regular speaker at international conferences. 

He speaks fluent Dutch in addition to his native English.

Adapting to an uncertain future
Adapting to an uncertain future
Mitigation gets most of the big headlines in the global discourse on the changing climate. However, no matter how successful — or not — the world is at mitigating global warming, many of the impacts of climate change are already underway and will greatly affect our future.
Find out more
Making the shift
Automotive, Travel & transportation
Making the shift
When Arthur D. Little (ADL) first set up its Future of Mobility Lab in 2010, there was much optimism that by now, we would have made significant progress toward the goal of more sustainable, resilient, safe, inclusive, efficient, and human-centric mobility systems in our cities. Technological developments — particularly the rapid advances of digitalization, connectivity, and automation — promised the ability to deliver tailored, diverse, and convenient mobility solutions to customers that would be attractive enough to prompt a major shift away from private cars.
Find out more
The future of mobility 5.0
Travel & transportation
The future of mobility 5.0
Find out more
Navigating AI: Challenging the north star
Navigating AI: Challenging the north star
AI adoption by companies is gathering pace, but initial use cases naturally tend to focus on optimization and efficiencies around internal use cases instead of novel AI-enabled products, services, and business models. In this Viewpoint, we use examples from a range of industries, exploring why companies should ensure they are positioned to seize long-term, revolutionary, and client-centric AI opportunities.
Find out more
Beyond systems
Beyond systems
Digitalization has become embedded within large businesses, with recent advances in AI accelerating the process even further. While we still need more progress, the fusion of business and IT functions is ever present, as “softwarization” of companies proceeds apace. IT functions need to recognize this pace of change and evolve toward being true strategic advisers to the business, driving innovation. In this Viewpoint, we examine some practical approaches for CIOs to bring about change.
Find out more
Be careful out there
Be careful out there
By now, business executives are well aware that using artificial intelligence (AI), especially generative AI (GenAI) such as ChatGPT, brings with it certain risks as well as benefits. Apart from the commonly cited existential risk of a future artificial general intelligence posing a threat to mankind, there are plenty of less severe but more likely risks. Those that most people have read about already are possible biases in GenAI’s outputs, as well as its propensity to “hallucinate” on occasion.
Find out more

Rick is Partner Emeritus at Arthur D. Little and Chairman of the editorial board of ADL’s management journal, PRISM

Rick has over 28 years of consulting experience in technology and innovation management, R&D strategy and organization, and 10 years of industrial experience in capital projects. His sector focus included transport, oil & gas, energy, chemicals, food & drink, nuclear, government, and consumer goods.

Examples of his work included R&D, organizational and process redesign, transformation of national research institutes, new growth strategies, innovation strategies, technology strategies, and benchmarking.

Before becoming Partner Emeritus, Rick was Chief Innovation Officer and Global Leader of the Technology & Innovation Management Practice, responsible for the firm’s functional expertise in innovation, R&D, and technology management.

Rick published on innovation and R&D management and is a regular speaker at international conferences. 

He speaks fluent Dutch in addition to his native English.

Adapting to an uncertain future
Adapting to an uncertain future
Mitigation gets most of the big headlines in the global discourse on the changing climate. However, no matter how successful — or not — the world is at mitigating global warming, many of the impacts of climate change are already underway and will greatly affect our future.
Find out more
Making the shift
Automotive, Travel & transportation
Making the shift
When Arthur D. Little (ADL) first set up its Future of Mobility Lab in 2010, there was much optimism that by now, we would have made significant progress toward the goal of more sustainable, resilient, safe, inclusive, efficient, and human-centric mobility systems in our cities. Technological developments — particularly the rapid advances of digitalization, connectivity, and automation — promised the ability to deliver tailored, diverse, and convenient mobility solutions to customers that would be attractive enough to prompt a major shift away from private cars.
Find out more
The future of mobility 5.0
Travel & transportation
The future of mobility 5.0
Find out more
Navigating AI: Challenging the north star
Navigating AI: Challenging the north star
AI adoption by companies is gathering pace, but initial use cases naturally tend to focus on optimization and efficiencies around internal use cases instead of novel AI-enabled products, services, and business models. In this Viewpoint, we use examples from a range of industries, exploring why companies should ensure they are positioned to seize long-term, revolutionary, and client-centric AI opportunities.
Find out more
Beyond systems
Beyond systems
Digitalization has become embedded within large businesses, with recent advances in AI accelerating the process even further. While we still need more progress, the fusion of business and IT functions is ever present, as “softwarization” of companies proceeds apace. IT functions need to recognize this pace of change and evolve toward being true strategic advisers to the business, driving innovation. In this Viewpoint, we examine some practical approaches for CIOs to bring about change.
Find out more
Be careful out there
Be careful out there
By now, business executives are well aware that using artificial intelligence (AI), especially generative AI (GenAI) such as ChatGPT, brings with it certain risks as well as benefits. Apart from the commonly cited existential risk of a future artificial general intelligence posing a threat to mankind, there are plenty of less severe but more likely risks. Those that most people have read about already are possible biases in GenAI’s outputs, as well as its propensity to “hallucinate” on occasion.
Find out more

More About Rick
  • University of Bristol
    BSc (Hons), Mechanical Engineering
  • Shell International Petroleum Company
    Project Manager, Head of Planning and Cost Engineering Netherlands (N.A.M) / Oman (Petroleum Dev Oman)