As a technology visionary and Information Technology industry executive, Reid McRae Watts has built a 25-year career around his love for technology and innovation inside the corporate world.  Until his exposure to the venture capital methods for commercializing new to the world innovations, Reid was forced to accept the reality that corporations were not as skilled as start-ups at bringing those technologies to the public.  As he continued his attempts at commercializing such technologies within the corporate environment, his failures ascertained his theory that it simply cannot be done.  With an enlightened perspective added to his comprehensive technology background, Reid discovered the real reasons behind the corporate defeats that are haunting the newspaper business sections each week, as well as a solution that utilizes the strengths and weaknesses of the corporation and the start-up, uniting them to ensure a successful future of technology. 

It is because of Reid's unusually varied exposure to the corporate R&D environment and the venture capital industry that he is able to propose a solution that addresses the root of the problem: the inevitable and unchangeable paradoxes between a start-up company and a large corporation that will never allow a corporation to beat the startup in certain innovation projects.  Reid has spent 25 years working in large corporate R&D environments, such as in Bell Labs, AT&T, and NCR, with some of the key technologies of our era attempting to commercialize breakthrough innovations. Reid headed the Comten Business Unit at NCR, served on the board of directors of the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC), and has worked closely with Amdahl, Battelle, Digital Equipment, Cray, Sun, Cisco, Alcatel, Motorola, IBM, as well as a number of smaller high technology companies.  As a Vice President of New Ventures at NCR, he attempted to implement a startup incubator within a traditional company, and learned why this usually does not work, as well as what actually does.  Reid founded Progeny Ventures, LLC, a company that has a unique mission and structure to assist brick and mortar corporations with early-stage Information Technology spinouts.  Reid serves on the Research Advisory Board of the Battelle Memorial Institute, the largest US contract research company and the operator of four of the US Department of Energy National Labs.

Reid has a Masters in Computer Science from the University of Kansas and is a graduate of the executive management programs at Yale and INSEAD (France).  He has founded four companies and has been awarded three patents to date.  Reid grew up in Switzerland, and has lived in the United States, Beirut, Lebanon and Rome, Italy.