I help established industries adopt technology without the usual cycle.
You know the one. Buy it, resist it, blame it, shelve it, panic when the market moves on without you.
I've spent 30 years on this problem. Built companies, advised leadership teams, got organizations to actually change. Not just buy the software. Change.
About
Two things define my career.
I'm a technologist who spent decades working with organizations where most people didn't grow up digital. I started in tech marketing — Google, Cisco, Adobe — then spent 16 years building a food marketing agency into Canada's largest independent before exiting. I know how to build technology and I know how to get reluctant organizations to use it. That combination is rarer than it should be.
The second is that I'm good at making complicated things clear. That's what attracted me to strategy and planning, finding the essential truth about a product or a market and making it impossible to ignore. It's also what makes me useful in a room full of people who don't trust technology and aren't sure they need it.
What I do now
6 Seeds
I run a consultancy for food and agriculture organizations. We started in communications. Increasingly the work is helping these organizations modernize how they operate. That means getting into the room with leadership, understanding why they're resisting, and building systems they'll actually use.
Ditto
I co-founded a synthetic research platform. Traditional market research is too slow and too expensive for the decisions my clients need to make. So I built something better.
Ivey Business School
I teach AI implementation at the Ivey Accelerator. How to evaluate what's real versus hype. How to place bets without betting the farm.
Future Bites
I write a column for Food in Canada Magazine on AI, trade policy, and where the industry is heading.
Previous ventures
Three exits: Nourish Marketing (Canada's largest independent food agency), Auralis Botanical (functional beverages, national distribution in Canada and the U.S.), and Publish and be Damned (self-publishing platform).
What this looks like in practice
I was presenting to about 70 people at a national trade association's annual meeting. Record attendance. These are people who work in agricultural exports, collectively moving close to a billion dollars of product across 120 countries every year.
I showed them how their scattered information, trip reports buried in email, market data in disconnected spreadsheets, member activities tracked in someone's head, could become something where you ask a question and get an answer instead of sending 50 emails and hoping someone remembers.
The discussion that followed wasn't about the technology. It was: We need to share what we're learning across markets and member organizations. And we need systems that make that possible without adding more work to already overstretched teams.
Then the CEO turned to me in front of the room and said: Can you help us figure this out?
That's the moment I live for in this work. When the conversation about technology becomes a conversation about what people actually need.
Work with me
Advisory
I work with leaders who know they need to change but aren't sure how to get there. Sometimes that's a 90-minute session to figure out where AI fits. Sometimes I'm embedded with your leadership team for months.
Speaking
I keynote on technology adoption and what it actually takes to get established organizations to change. Recent stages include the International Peanut Forum (Seville), USAEDC, and USA Rice Federation.
Recent speaking locations
What people say
"He somehow made AI feel human. Andreas connected the dots between technology, consumer behavior, and what actually moves the needle in food."
Louise McKerchar
Vice President, Europe, UK & SE Asia
American Peanut Council
"Not a single slide of fluff. Just sharp insight, clear direction, and a genuine understanding of what our members are grappling with right now."
Gina Tumbarelli
United States Agricultural Export Development Council
"Andreas possesses a rare and valuable talent for translating complex, emerging technologies into practical insights that directly address the pressing challenges faced by leaders in the food and agriculture sectors."
Zhixin Wang, Ph.D.
Food Technology Research Manager (North America)
Puratos