Dave Graves, a true visionary and futurist

At a time when Reuters senior management was denouncing the internet as an “American fad,” Dave, as Executive Vice President of Reuters New Media, was as instrumental as anyone in pushing the company into the Digital Age.

A legitimate visionary and futurist, Dave was arguably the first person to sell news on the internet as part of a deal with Yahoo!, then the largest search engine on the planet. This forced newspapers to set up online sites and start running stories around the clock, instead of twice a day in their morning and afternoon editions.

At a gathering of internet gurus and entrepreneurs, Dave once described my strengths as a boss. I fully expected him to say that I was a brilliant strategist and a top-notch commander. Instead, he said I was the best boss he ever had because I got out of his way and let him do whatever he wanted.

It paid off. Reuters would go on to make scads of money from our Internet exploits and watch as our share price soared.

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