Richard Noble OBE

Richard Noble OBE is a British entrepreneur who has achieved six world speed records, including breaking the Sound barrier on land which has never been equalled or beaten.

Against a background of today's relatively low risk culture, Richard specialises in developing high risk ventures. Obviously, not all of them will be successful, but the Thrust2 programme, which brought the World Land Speed Record back to Britain in 1983, and the Thrust SSC first ever supersonic land speed record programme, set at Black Rock Desert Nevada in 1997, are the best known.

Richard Noble's other projects include the ARV Super2 light aircraft, the Atlantic Sprinter Blue Riband contender, Programme Funding, an original television funding company, Farnborough Aircraft, the first distributed travel air taxi aircraft and currently the Mach 1.4 Bloodhound SSC project.

These projects all started very small and being original in concept attract only very limited resource. So they have to obey the rules of small company survival:
1. Keep it simple.
2. Build a highly motivated, small team.
3. Move decisively and quickly.
4. Make up for the financial deficiencies with a very high level of team motivation and productivity.

The projects have always tended to be innovative - and that puts them against the odds and against the system which will always favour the conventional. Whilst support in terms of people and resource tends to be forthcoming, the financial support has always been the most difficult to achieve - whether sponsorship or investment - and often because of the financial community's real doubts about the teams ability to achieve. Oddly it does seem that the higher the perceived risk by the financial people, the greater the chance of the team achieving!

A lifelong interest in speed and engineering, Richard’s work has scaled all aspects with projects completed in air, marine and his best known, on land.

Richard Noble is a first class communicator and passionate about British engineering. He used the Bloodhound programme to advance engineering education in UK. In 2018 becoming the largest STEM programme in UK – engaging with 2,000,000 schoolchildren worldwide.

Richard was awarded the OBE for services to motor sport in 1983.

Richard Noble has been a regular motivational keynote speaker at corporate conferences and events all over the world for more than 25 years. He is passionate about translating his experiences from these high risk ventures into key management lessons and corporate presentations.

Because of the wide range of activities involved in his projects, Richard is able to speak on a very wide range of business related topics. Key to all his presentations are the essential themes of will-to-win, through to success and the extraordinary levels of risk, stress and pressure involved in his activities.

Popular speech topics include:
• Leadership & management
• Innovation
• Team building
• Motorsport
• Science & technology

As one might expect, the projects in which Richard is involved tend to operate some way ahead of conventional corporate change - being dependent on the need for very high levels of individual performance and funded with minimal finance.

Every step forward requires the winning of a serious battle and considerable courage from the companies and partners involved - as well as new levels of skill and motivation from the team members. Potential for total project failure is seldom more than a couple of weeks ahead, such is the price exacted for developing disruptive technologies.

A key development of these projects was the flat company developed from Richard's experiences with the US American Management Association. Although the working principles developed as early as the Thrust2 programme, it wasn't until the ThrustSSC project was faced with total failure of corporate sponsorship and the challenge from McLaren and the Americans that the company was configured as a flat company in order to provide the very high levels of individual performance and corporate agility needed to beat the well funded opposition.

The flat company structure is designed to totally replace the old traditional hierarchical structure and is configured to ensure maximum contribution from the Ego and Self Actualisation personal motivators as defined by Abraham Maslow - the same motivators which Maslow stated are seldom more than 10% satisfied in traditional companies. The successful flat company depends very much on a rejection of the old hierarchical principles and replacement with very high standards of teamwork with enhanced communication innovation integrity and decision making skills from the team members. Key to holding the teams together is the Group Dynamics team working principles – which tend to be the exact opposite of those practiced in the traditional confrontational hierarchical company.

Expressed in ThrustSSC terms, the Thrust flat company was able to out-innovate, out-work and out-perform its competitors by a very wide margin and to deliver the first supersonic land speed record on just 12% of the MacLaren budget.

Richard's presentations are deeply thought provoking, are presented at a fast pace and feature amazing video inserts. The idea is to inspire the audience to realise that their true potential is likely to be way ahead of their current levels of personal ambition and to encourage original thought, action and to understand true teamwork.

Each of Richard Noble's presentation is bespoke, and written to achieve the client's specific objectives.

Clients often ask about purchasing books for giveaways and delegate packs. Below you’ll find a selection of products by Richard Noble OBE. Click the images to view on Amazon's website. For bulk orders, please speak with your Booking Agent.