E143 Richard Peers

What if the future of tech wasn’t about faster chips — but deeper values?

Richard Peers, founder of Responsible Risk and former Microsoft and Accenture leader, has lived through every technological revolution from the birth of the PC to the rise of AI — and he’s seen what we keep getting wrong.

He built alliances without power, sold the future to people terrified of change, and watched as the world’s biggest companies learned that timing, not talent, decides who wins. But now, Richard’s focus is shifting — from performance to purpose, from profit to planet.

We talk about the 1980s wild west of computing, Microsoft’s cultural metamorphosis, and how evangelism built billion-dollar brands — before turning to what comes next: AI, geospatial data, and the urgent need to value natural capital before the planet sends the invoice.

This isn’t nostalgia for the tech that built the world — it’s a call to use technology to rebuild it.