Jim Cooper

Jim Cooper is a free-range operator in innovation and commercialization, and additionally currently serving as GM (North America) for Blue-X, a fisheries-based, Sydney-founded advisory. He likes working at the intersection of climate, applied science, engineering and primary industries—agtech, fisheries, energy, supply chain and biotech. He’s spent the past 15–20 years building and running accelerators, designing more accelerator curricula than is healthy, and helping founders and researchers turn promising ideas into things that the market wants. Jim is an NSF I-Corps instructor across multiple US hubs, and advises and mentors widely across the US, Canada and Australia, including with UCSD StartBlue at Scripps Oceanography, Lab2Market Oceans (Canada), CSU Biotech, Beanstalk, and as PA for LARTA Institute’s federal SBIR commercialization programs. Previously, he cofounded Braid Theory, an ocean and maritime accelerator based at the Port of Los Angeles, and earlier still worked in public-sector policy and market research in Australia and New Zealand.