Management Buy-In at Cogapp Enables a Step Change in Digital Innovation

A management buy-in today at leading international digital agency Cogapp enables a step change in its capacity for innovation and growth.

In 2016 Cogapp started on a new, more innovative and technically focussed, business strategy. This strategy has paid off in the form of excellent results in the last three years. Recognising this success, and building on it, three senior directors have today agreed a management buy-in with the two founders.

Co-owned for over thirty years by Alex Morrison (Managing Director) and Ben Rubinstein (Technical Director), the Cogapp management buy-in brings in three additional owners, Tristan Roddis (Director of Web Development), Gavin Mallory (Production Director) and Andy Cummins (Director of Product Development).

Gavin, Andy and Tristan have been highly instrumental in Cogapp’s recent successes. Over the last three years their involvement in the direction of the company has increased significantly. The management buy-in provides a firm basis on which to continue that trajectory and significantly strengthen the company’s leadership.

Alex Morrison said: “Working with organisations that are often hundreds of years old, Cogapp has always taken a long-term view. Since our formation in 1985 we’ve been blessed with amazing projects and wonderful people to work with. Gavin, Andy, Tristan have been working with Ben and me for more than twelve years. Now they are joining us as co-owners. This gives us a much stronger senior management team to take Cogapp into the future. With five of us running the business we will be able to take our innovation programmes and product development work to a new level. I’m so proud of what we’ve done already but even more excited about what we will be able to accomplish working together in future.”

Founded in 1985, Cogapp has won more than thirty awards for innovative work ranging from ground-breaking work for Apple to web design for the London 2012 Olympics.

The three new co-owners of the business are:

Tristan Roddis - Director of Web Development

Tristan joined Cogapp in 2004. In recent years he has led the technical development on our flagship online digital projects. Tristan is an acknowledged expert on modern web technologies especially as they relate to the presentation and processing of digital images of documents and artworks.

Gavin Mallory - Production Director

Gavin joined Cogapp in 2006. As Production Director he leads all our project management and production work including our flagship online archive projects. Gavin is a leading practitioner and innovator in the field of Agile software project management.

Andy Cummins - Director of Product Development

Like Gavin, Andy joined in 2006. An exceptionally gifted technical leader, Andy is kick-starting our development of commercial products based on needs we identify in the course of our other work.

Further Information

For further information, email Alex Morrison ( alexm@cogapp.com) or call +44 1273 821600.

Background

Alex Morrison - Managing Director

Alex leads Cogapp’s business development work, directs projects for clients and consults/speaks/writes about digital strategy. His ‘Digital Strategy for Museums Guide’ has been downloaded more than a thousand times.

An exceptionally experienced digital media producer, Alex has led ground-breaking work for prominent institutions including Apple, Microsoft, nine national museums, the BBC, Dorling Kindersley and Save the Children.

Alex wrote his first computer program, an online game for an IBM mainframe system, on a deck of punched cards. After a spell as a management consultant with Arthur Andersen, he became involved in artificial intelligence. In 1985 this led to a move to Brighton to found a company associated with the University of Sussex’s Cognitive Studies programme, Cognitive Applications; now Cogapp.

Alex and his colleagues at the new company started developing projects using hypertext and multimedia. Projects in the cultural sector followed including the development of the ‘Computer Information Room’ for the National Gallery’s Sainsbury Wing. An intense and formative three-year project, which often resembled an extended seminar on museums, new media and art history, this gave birth to the Micro Gallery. Opened in 1991, the Micro Gallery was the first large-scale application of digital media in a museum.

Since 1991, Alex and his colleagues have been applying digital media technologies for clients from Seattle to Tokyo via London, Athens and Doha.

Alex is Chair of Wired Sussex. He served seven years as a trustee for Art UK and is an advisor to Our Future City. He has a degree in Mathematics and Philosophy from Oxford University.

Ben Rubinstein - Technical Director

Ben is Cogapp’s Technical Director. He has played a major role in most of its online collection - including for the National Portrait Gallery, MoMA New York, and Whitney Museum of American Art - and mobile app projects, in particular over a dozen apps produced for Dorling Kindersley.

He also works with archives, including at the Yiddish Book Centre and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.

Ben has a degree in Philosophy and Artificial Intelligence from Sussex University. Ben joined Cogapp in 1987, and became technical director in time to help establish the new direction of the company towards the web and multimedia. Since then Ben has been responsible for the company’s technical development. He was the chief architect and lead developer of Cogapp’s proprietary multimedia technology, used at the National Gallery of Art (Washington), the National Gallery (London) and many other institutions, and licensed to Microsoft to deliver numerous consumer products.

Ben’s work on these and other projects exemplifies his commitment to finding new ways for organisations to exploit digital technology to better serve their public audiences.

Cogapp

Cogapp is a digital media agency and an industry-leader in producing software for online archives and museums. More generally, it has a thirty three year track-record producing long-lasting innovative work for high-profile, public-facing projects.

Founded in 1985, Cogapp operates nationally and internationally from an office in Brighton and an outpost in New York.

The company provides services including:

• digital strategy
• website and mobile app design and development
• digital publishing systems
• innovation and research projects

Clients are typically ambitious, quality-conscious organisations with large public audiences. The company has extensive experience working with museums, archives, libraries and publishers.

Notable case studies include work for MoMA, the National Portrait Gallery, Dorling Kindersley, the Qatar National Library, London 2012, the British Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Past clients include Apple, Microsoft, the British Museum, the BBC, and Manchester United.

There are thousands of digital media agencies. What sets Cogapp apart is its track record of delivering ground-breaking strategically important projects for organisations with very high standards. Cogapp’s work has won more than 30 awards.

The company provides industry-leading expertise in the following areas:

• Online archives
• Online presentation of art and museum collections
• Arabic-English interfaces and search solutions
• IIIF software development
• Content management and publishing systems
• Advanced search applications
• Applications of artificial intelligence processing to digital content
• Agile software development

Cogapp’s business rests on five principles:

• innovation in digital media;
• creating outstanding long-term value for our clients;
• producing work that enriches the lives of the people who use it;
• fostering a prosperous working environment where everyone involved can thrive and do their best work;
• playing a useful part in our community.

These principles provide the criteria we use in every aspect of our business including who we work with, what we do and how we do it.