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Game plan


For some, entrepreneurial spirit seems to be hard-wired into their DNA. Take Richard Tait, a 1986 Heriot-Watt graduate of Computer Science and the creator of everyone’s favourite way to spend Christmas Day getting busy with the modelling clay – the board game Cranium.


Early attempts at entrepreneurism were not quite such a runaway success – Richard’s teenage venture as Scotland’s first door-to-door mackerel salesman in his hometown of Helensburgh came to an abrupt end when the perishable nature of his product became apparent.


Undeterred, however, upon graduating from Heriot-Watt Richard took his skills to a fledgling Microsoft, where he started more than a dozen new companies, helping transform the consumer technology experience over a span of ten years.


At the age of 32, feeling he had achieved all he wanted to at Microsoft, Richard left to follow a new dream, and shortly after Cranium was born. As co-founder of the company, he built both a wildly successful brand and an award-winning corporate culture. In Richard’s decade at the helm, Cranium received more than 100 awards for product


excellence – including the Toy Industry Association’s Game of the Year award five times in six years. In 2008, Cranium was acquired by Hasbro, the world’s largest game maker, and today is estimated to have been played by half a billion people around the world.


Today, Richard channels his passion for helping people pursue their dreams, as he has done, into his new company: Seattle-based start-up BoomBoom, an incubator for young entrepreneurs and their brand-new businesses in his adopted home city.


As well as supporting grass roots business, Richard is also playing a key role in the future of one of Seattle’s biggest success stories: Starbucks. As the coffee behemoth’s first entrepreneur-in-residence, expect to see hot beverage innovations and a host of healthier food at your local branch soon if Richard has anything to do with it. Just don’t ask for mackerel...


Just for the record


An alumnus of Heriot-Watt Dubai has made the record books... with a little help from 70,000 lightbulbs and 55,000 metres of cable.


Bashar Kassab was instrumental in the making of an LED screen on Dubai’s Burj Khalifa that has been officially recognised by Guinness World Records as the longest and highest on Earth.


70,000 lightbulbs 55,000 metres of cable 32,467 sq metres


Heriot-Watt University www.alumni.hw.ac.uk


The dazzling LED display enveloped the world’s tallest skyscraper in the flag of the United Arab Emirates, ensuring all eyes were on Dubai during the Downtown Dubai New Year’s Eve 2015 Gala – alternating with displays of Arabic motifs, mashrabiya (oriel window) patterns, and the flags of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and Kuwait, the UAE’s fellow members of the Gulf Cooperation Council.


Spanning a total area of 32,467sq metres, the illumination was 3.75 times larger than the previous record display, with 100,000 brackets holding up those 70,000 LED bulbs.


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