Bob Greenberg has made his name as a digital leader by embracing the same philosophy as his long-time client Nike. Whatever the digital challenge, Bob will “Just Do It”, and typically before anybody else. Small wonder that his agency R/GA has played a big part in some of the most signficant digital innovations. BOB GREENBERG When you sit with Bob Greenberg, you feel as if you are in the company of an Elizabethan magus. It is a matter both of appearance and aura. The appearance is extraordinary: clad always in difficult-to-define garments of black, the only contrast coming from three massive bracelets of steel, and topped by a black, brimless cap, from behind which two streams of grey hair cascade to his shoulders. This is surely some kind of digital Dr Dee of the twenty-first century, lodged incongruously in a huge cube dropped by Norman Foster into the middle of New York’s Hudson Yards, occupying the whole 12th floor of a vintage Brutalist office building, the size of two football pitches. On the shelves behind him are ranged scores of carved stone Buddhas, all meticulously chosen (and scientifically vetted through scan electron microscopy before purchase) from just one – relatively obscure – dynastic period, the Northern Qi Dynasty, AD 550–577. Now he’s migrating to new territory, the Northern Wei, AD 386–534. The auras of collector and collected do seem to converge a bit, and when Bob speaks it is in a low, measured, gentle and serene tone which suggests (and demonstrates) superior enlightenment. Bob’s cube is a long way from middle-class Chicago in the 1940s, where he grew up as one of three highly creative children. He still feels like a Chicagoan in New York, not least because of his addiction – this is not too strong a word – to architecture. But he’s not an establishment Chicagoan. Born dyslexic, he’s always regarded himself as self-taught. The dyslexia is a trait he’s proud to share with a group of highly original and disruptive business people, such as Steve Jobs, Richard Branson and Charles Schwab. He recalls without rancour seeing his sister just fly through pages of reading. Instead, he noticed that he saw the world differently. It’s a habit he’s made a remarkable career out of. “His great contribution to the digital age is that he has seen it from the view of production.”