IT Leader Profile: Mark Richardson

What does your job entail?
Ocado is quite self-sufficient in IT, so it’s important that we hire the best people. That means my first responsibility is to ensure we have the highest quality team that we can find.

What was your first job?
From age 13 to 20, I worked each summer in a café in my home town. Each sunny day I got to drive a Land Rover along the beach and sell ice creams to the tourists. I can’t tell you what a fantastic job this was. Anyway, I worked for wonderful people, who taught me about margins, wastage and customer service, and I’ve been in retailing ever since.

What is the first web site you check in the mornings?
I have an iGoogle homepage that brings me the BBC business news, headlines from New Scientist and links to everything else I am likely to need at work or at home.

Which technology has had the biggest impact on your working life?
The internet, of course. Without it, and the new opportunities it brought, I would have left the IT industry a long time ago.

Which technology would you most like to have invented?
The mobile phone. We take them for granted now, but I remember watching Star Trek as a kid and imagining how cool it would be to have a “communicator”. Now I can call my mum from a hilltop in Thailand or a restaurant in New York and it costs only a few pennies.

Which technologies do you most rely on outside the office?
iTunes, satnav and the coffee machine.

What keeps you awake at night?
She’s called Anna and she’s 11 months old. She likes old reggae songs, Japanese food and a bit of mum or dad’s company around 2am each morning.