Bob Butler

Cary, NC USA 

Throughout his career, Bob Butler has focused on the commercialization of new ideas in diverse fields including biotechnology, energy, international trade, and software and the Internet. Mr. Butler has spent over 20 years in C-level positions in the high technology industry at both start-ups and large global companies.

Currently, Mr. Butler is CEO of BestThinking, Inc. developers of BestThinking.com and ReallyWho.com. He was most recently a COO/GM for LexisNexis, one of the world’s largest online information and content providers with over 13,000 employees (about the size of Yahoo!), over 4 billion searchable documents, and a leader in identity verification. LexisNexis is part of Reed Elsevier, a leading publisher of scientific, medical, legal, and business journals and websites.

Previously, Mr. Butler was the founder and CEO of Time Matters Software (Data.TXT Corporation). Time Matters was one of the first major information and document management systems with an application-level browser interface. Under his leadership, Time Matters became one of the most widely used information and document management systems in the US legal market.

Mr. Butler created and maintained complex multilateral trading relationships, successfully negotiating and managing some of the first direct-to-manufacturer distribution agreements in communist block countries. He set up distribution channels for Eastern European products in more than 20 Latin American and Caribbean countries.

Mr. Butler was a leader in the oxygenated fuels industry’s efforts to remove lead from gasoline and lessen US dependence on foreign oil. He testified before then Congressman Al Gore and the US Congress Energy and Commerce Committee about the environmental and strategic importance of alternative octane and fuel technology. He led teams designing and building alternative energy projects in the U.S. and overseas, including a large scale E85 Ethanol Fuel production facility that continues to operate to this day.

Mr. Butler was the lead technical resource in a $220 million funding for alternative energy projects using an innovative combination of Wall Street equity and Federal loan guarantees syndicated into the secondary market. He holds two US Patents for technology for producing fuels from biomass, was a speaker at the 1980 World Bio-Energy Conference, and received an Andrew W. Mellon Grant for bio-energy research.

He was Vice President of National Biocentric, Inc. and a member of the University of Minnesota Biotechnology Advisory Board. Mr. Butler has taught managerial economics in the Executive MBA program at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. He is a graduate of the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities with a BS degree in economics and graduate work in industrial relations, labor economics and econometrics. He is a resident of Cary, North Carolina, where he has served as co-chair of the Cary Economic Development Commission.