Name: Mark Elliott
Born: New Haw, Surrey
Age: 54
Family life: Lives in Newcastle with his wife Janet. They have four children: Roberta, 27; 21-year-old Kate; Douglas, 18; and 10-year-old Xavier.
Downtime: Contemporary dance, films and (hopefully soon) archery.
Strengths: Strategic vision and eye for excellence.
Limitations: Impatience - he wants things done yesterday.
Pet hate: Moaners.
Last holiday: Kefalonia, Greece
Favourite film: Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now.
MARK Elliott is unusually down in the dumps.
He’s about to go into hospital for a hip replacement operation and his pain is obvious as he hobbles around his office.
But with typical defiance he insists he’ll be back within weeks to continue leading the ambitious 25-year digital project he started in 2003.
Since then DigitalCity has helped more than 200 fledgling creative businesses and around 30 are currently housed in the flagship £10m Boho One building in Middlesbrough.
The centrepiece of Teesside’s digital infrastructure, it has attracted companies from as far away as Turkey and interest from India, Brazil and Japan.
The challenge, says Elliott, is to get local entrepreneurs to think big and think global - and the evidence suggests they are heeding his advice.
Boho-based game development studio Double Eleven recently signed an exclusive deal with international giant Sony, while Teesside graduate Kevin Mann secured hefty financial backing from heavyweight US investors for his Graphic.ly software venture.
“The key to this is to have the right kind of companies that can attract private sector investment,” says Elliott.
“We’re starting to see real evidence of good companies and ideas being developed here.
“Companies are now helping and mentoring each other, which is exactly what we wanted to happen when we first set up the project.”
He talks a good game, but the journey hasn’t always been smooth.
A few years ago, he was struggling to nail down an extra £1m to get Boho One up and running - money that was needed to prevent the collapse of the entire project.
Even after the bricks had been laid and the walls painted there were problems, with digital linchpins Moshine and Seed Animation departing from Middlesbrough - the latter claiming it had reached a glass ceiling on Teesside.
But new companies have come in to replace them, including Berkshire software firm Antix Labs and Surrey technology business amBX, which both set up camp in Boho One.
With more than £13m of public money swallowed up by the project so far, Elliott is under pressure to deliver results.
But he’s confident the venture has already delivered a healthy return and says the ultimate aim is to have a “self sustaining” digital super-cluster that needs no backing from the public purse from 2015.
He’s not quite at that stage yet though, and has made an ambitious bid for a £4m slice of the Government-backed Regional Growth Fund - a £1.4bn, three-year scheme to boost private sector growth.
If he gets the go-ahead - a decision is expected in the autumn - the money will be used to fund a new 30,000 square foot building to be located behind Boho One.
If he doesn’t, he says he has a plan “B”, although he’s coy about what it is.
He backs himself to be nimble enough - once his new hip has been fitted, of course - to grasp new opportunities if others slip through the net.
And it’s exactly what he expects companies living the Teesside digital dream to do.
“They need to strive for excellence.
“Just being good is not good enough to compete on the international stage.”
His edgy confidence and outspokenness have allowed him to blaze a trail in the traditionally cut-throat creative industry.
After studying film and graphic design at London’s St Martins School of Art (now Central St Martins), he went on to become London’s youngest ever commercial director, spending more than 15 years directing and creating commercials and corporate films for global brands such as Volkswagon, Unilever and Coca Cola.
He seized his opportunity to break outside of the film industry when he went to Middlesbrough Football Club as creative director in 1996 - a world first.
Seven years later he got the chance to lead the DigitalCity venture and he has no plans to walk away from it now.
If he does hand the reins to someone else, it won’t be before the venture is seen as a proper Teesside success story.
“I’d have no pride in this if on the day I walked away it fell to pieces.”
It may well fail if continuing economic turbulence scares off investors.
But Elliott, with typical bullishness, dismisses that suggestion.
“A recession is a great spur for investment.
“Lots of people decide to set up a business then.
“Technology companies are still successful - just look at Apple.”
The US tech giant, which last week announced the resignation of inspirational founder Steve Jobs, is one of the world’s greatest success stories that is unlikely to be repeated on Teesside.
But with someone as ambitious as Elliott in charge, you wouldn’t discount it altogether.